


Blind Spots

by Falke



Series: Finding Our Way [1]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Action, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Graphic Violence, Minor Original Character(s), Police Procedural, Romance, Slow Burn, Spoilers, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-01 16:48:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6528139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falke/pseuds/Falke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A murder investigation teaches ZPD a few things about Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, and teaches Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde a few things about themselves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is set post-canon. It includes spoilers from the film, original characters, graphic violence and strong language. It adheres to timeline and will reference some of my earlier works (Perspective and It's Not a Couch, It's an Island), but they aren't required reading to understand what's going on.
> 
> Points of view alternate and are marked at the beginning of each chapter in the header notes. Extra tidbits and original character bios in the footnotes as they appear.
> 
> Thanks for reading!
> 
>  
> 
> POV Judy

Bogo never started a meeting with an apology. Never apologized at all, really. It meant bad news.

"There's no easy first murder case," he'd said. "And this is not a straightforward murder case to begin with."

And as she read the case file, Judy felt herself half-hoping Bogo would apologize again. It was probably warranted.

He was frowning at them from where he stood behind his desk, in the way that meant he was concerned but didn't want to show it, even in his own office. Nick, beside her, was chewing his lip. He'd leaned over to see the file; now some of the enthusiasm was draining from his ears.

"I trust I don't need to draw you any more pictures," Bogo said. "If you can't deal with more of that, say so now."

Judy snapped the file closed, as if it might help. "Why us?"

"We're interviewing everyone as a matter of policy." Bogo's lips compressed. He looked at Nick. "We're interviewing you because Officer Wilde has more of a past with organized crime than the rest of us."

Judy flicked between them. It was an expectation that as far as she knew had never been made official. Nick had connections in the city, like it or not, and that made him an asset when investigations veered into the underworld. But he'd never agreed to lend his skills like this before.

Nick tried a queasy smile. "I was more the fence-dubious-curios type than the psychotic muscle." He frowned at the folder. "What was it, an elephant?"

"A rhino, we think." Bogo sighed. "The point is it's easier for you to talk to your little friend Big than it is for one of the badges in the OCD. He knows all of them already."

"Gotcha."

"We don't want him, and you can tell him that. It's not his style. He's a financial criminal. City hall has auditors to handle his hobbies." Bogo held out a hoof for the case file. Judy was glad to surrender it. "We want whoever's stomping on bankers on our sidewalks, and maybe he'll be able to at least point us the right way. This is three in two weeks. We need a break."

Judy's stomach rolled. She watched Nick master something similar and glance her way.

The funny thing was, Judy might have been the better in on Mr. Big's family. They'd never troubled Bogo with that little detail of the mobster's daughter, though. One cop mixing with the fringe was probably enough. There was less paperwork that way.

"I don't need an answer right this second, but the sooner we get a full team on this, the better," Bogo said. "Fangmire and Torren have already volunteered, if you want a better idea of who you'd be working with. Marki has stepped up for standby in case things go that way."

Nick looked her way again. "Give us a few minutes to hash it out?"

"Take ten." Bogo grimaced. "Just remember we've got a scene cooling down in Sahara Square."

\---

Their shared desk was a constant controlled explosion of hardcopy and binders, but right now Judy was glad for the familiar shambles and close quarters. She sat in her boosted chair, let it carry her on a slow spin, and watched Nick eat a donut.

"That's maybe the second worst thing I've ever seen," he said. "No wonder the morgue boys were looking off this morning."

"How the hell can you eat right now?"

"Autopilot," he said, and inspected a wayward sprinkle. "It's just calories if you look close enough. Energy."

"Do you really want to take this one?" Judy asked. "Just because you know a guy or two? It doesn't make you the best option to chase down a possible murderer."

"It was going to come up eventually," he said. "And if we're really stumped otherwise, I don't know. If I can help, I should. I think you're rubbing off on me."

Judy's ears warmed. She always did like taking some credit for that. Nick held onto a lot of the sly I-don't-care outlook she'd first met him with, but ever since he'd come on as her partner he'd turned downright responsible sometimes.

"So that's one vote of two," Nick said. "Your call now. Nobody's going to blame you for going the other way on this one. I'll bet you even Marki went green."

"I'd blame me," Judy said. " You're right. It's like that first vixen we met. Someone out there needs help. A lot of it."

Nick finally left off the donut and looked at her, really looked at her, with one ear partway down and that tilt to his head that meant he was trying to read her, to figure out how to react himself.

"This is no domestic disturbance. That's two really grisly murders. Three now, assuming there's enough left for forensics to scrape dental records off the sidewalk."

"Stop worrying about me so loud. I'm not going to let you do it alone," she said. "If you're in, you're going to need someone to hold you up."

"That's the truth." 

It was conspiratorial. A lot of their interaction on the job felt that way these days, the way they shared the closer parts that went way past buddy-cop. Judy thought it made them better partners. Bogo probably thought so, too, if he'd asked them to do this.

And like Nick had said, something like this was only going to be a matter of time. She wasn't looking forward to it, oh no. But she'd rather deal with it now. The experience of Fangmire and Marki and the rest would help. And Nick was her partner. They'd be able to tackle it together.

\---

It was so, so much worse in person.

Their first clue was the vehicles. ZPD wasn't above a little misdirection to keep from causing a stir. The heavy-duty forensic incident team had a van labeled with the public utilities department seal, and half a block over there was a local telecom van with the DOT number in the wrong spot: their sensor truck. There were three layers of tape, two big white tents with chillers going and a range of curiously unconcerned civilians scattered just so to ward off prying eyes that got too close. The media, amazingly, was leaving it alone.

A wolf with the forensics team met Judy and Nick inside the first perimeter and held the tent flap for them.

"Chief warned you, yeah?" he asked.

"Yeah," Nick answered for her. Judy was rooted to the spot.

She was looking at what had once been a mouse in a neat suit. There was a briefcase a few feet away, incongruously untouched. With the lights and the chillers and the evidence tags, it almost looked like someone's twisted idea of a provocative modern art installation.

"A couple hours old," the wolf answered the questions Judy couldn't force out. "We got the call almost right away." He looked sympathetic. "His wife was with him."

Judy turned away. "What?"

"She's in the next tent over," the wolf said. "Bad case of shock. She won't let any of our people near her, so we're just watching for now. We need her statement."

"Trauma," Nick prompted. 

"Yeah." The tech looked over to a teammate for confirmation. "There's odd smudging on some of the impact points, actually. It'll need a scan, but we're guessing a shoe of some kind. Big and flat, not crampons or anything."

Judy swayed, and Nick reached a supportive paw for her elbow.

"I want to talk to her."

"You might be best," the wolf agreed. "You're only a little bigger than she is. That seems to be important right now."

Judy nodded and let Nick steer her from the tent. As soon as they were back out in the sunlight, he let her stand on her own.

"Don't push it too fast, Carrots," he muttered, low. "You okay?"

"Just give me a minute." The warm air was actually more of a comfort than refrigeration. Judy kept her eyes closed and just breathed for a while, and gradually felt better. 

She hoped she was ready for this. She'd interviewed her fair share of suspects and witnesses by now, but they were for minor things: theft, or drug possession. The damage wasn't as hard to stop thinking about.

Nick would handle the rest of the investigating they could do down here. She shot him one more grateful glance, took her hat off and pushed into the other tent.

A tiny mouse woman in business casual jerked and stared at the entrance, whiskers quivering. She sat in a chair a couple scales too large for her. There was a glass of water on the table in front of her, untouched.

"Ma'am," Judy started. She didn't know her name. "I'm officer Judy Hopps, with ZPD."

Nothing. Judy's apology jammed in her throat, because what could she possibly say that meant anything to this woman now? She sat in a chair on the other side of the table.

"Leila," the mouse said in a voice even smaller than Judy expected. "Leila Winston."

"We're taking care of you, Leila." Judy didn't know if that was the truth, but it seemed to help calm the mouse down. "We're going to get to the bottom of what happened this morning. Do you remember anything that might help? Any details of what you saw?"

Winston flinched at that. "Jeremiah's a banker," she said. "A banker. He works for Garreline accounting downtown. He never does anything wrong. He waters the plants on the weekends and we play tennis together." She looked up at Judy. "What has he done?"

"Your husband?" Judy asked. The tense was confusing, but if she was talking about... next door, she wasn't about to correct her.

"Yes. What's he done?"

"Nothing, as far as we know." 

"He's a good man," Winston repeated. She stared at the table. "There was no warning. Nothing was wrong. I was walking him to the train station."

"Do you live nearby?"

"Just down the block."

"What do you do, Ma'am?"

"I'm a schoolteacher."

"Do you know what happened this morning?" Judy resisted the urge to fidget. The circular questioning was a tactic for getting through to people eventually, but she'd never had much patience for it.

"We were going to the station. The ground shook, even more than when the big cars go by. We were almost to the overpass tubes, so I didn't think anything of it. There was a camel, but he was walking the other way. I looked up and there was a rhinoceros out for a morning run and then Jeremiah was gone. I don't know where he went."

"Do you remember anything about the rhinoceros?"

"No. He was larger than most. He scared me. Did Jeremiah run from him? Do you know where he is?"

Judy's heart cramped. It was obviously mania, but Winston sounded so sincere. Like the silly police just had to look around to really find her Jeremiah.

"I'll-" She had to swallow. "I'll go see if anyone knows where he went."

"Oh, thank you. He's a good man."

Judy couldn't turn away from the mouse. She backed out of the tent and the sun lashed out at her again. She had a splitting headache.

The forensics coordinator had disappeared. Nick was off with one of the techs, pointing at the nearest traffic light. He spotted her and started over.

She sat on a bench and wished the sun would go away. It was too hot out here.

"Hey." Nick double-took. "Carrots. What is it?"

"No family?" Judy asked. "The poor woman needs the psych team. Or someone from Rodentia Task Force. Someone her size."

"What did she say?"

"Nothing that made much sense. She thinks her husband is still alive. I've got a firm: Garreline accounting. She said he worked there. Tentatively identified a rhinoceros nearby at time of death."

She was rambling, but Nick seemed to take it in stride. "You got all that?"

She waved a little recorder - a proper one from the evidence toolkit this time, not her carrot. "Let the techs have this. What did you find?"

"Nothing on cams. They're at the intersections and this happened outside the range of any of them. Evidence has already looked over this morning's footage for Rhinos. No dice."

"You can't access the blind spot any other way?"

Nick shrugged. "We'll have to ask city planning. What are you thinking?"

"Cars, I don't know." Judy waved a paw. "If he skipped the cameras somehow. Maybe someone gave him a ride."

They drove back to headquarters and tagged everything they'd collected with the appropriate paperwork. Nick submitted requests to check IDs on all cars that passed the cameras in the window of death and sent a query on the accounting firm. Judy stared at her desk, her head buzzing. He didn't seem to mind that she wasn't pitching in. 

He took her home, to her place. They made it to her door before the world came unglued and Judy decided she was going to be sick.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV Judy

The light was all wrong when Judy woke. The sun was already dipping behind the building across the way, instead of reflecting off its face into her window the way it did in the mornings. Her apartment ceiling looked washed out.

She was still dressed. She raised her head and saw Nick sitting on the couch at the foot of her bed. He'd been dozing, too, but now that he saw she was awake he pushed himself to his feet and came around beside her.

"Feeling better?"

"A bit." Her stomach was settled, but in place of the nausea was a gnawing guilt. It hadn't taken her long to crack at all. "You didn't tell Bogo, did you?"

"Not a word," Nick promised. "But you know how he is, he can probably guess."

Judy sat up and hung her legs over the edge of the bed. "I can't let it get to me."

"I don't know," Nick said. "There's a limit. If this sort of thing isn't getting to you, you've got a problem."

Every time she blinked, Judy saw either the mouse's face - Leila, that was her name - or the scene. "So you're a psychopath, then?"

Nick snorted. "No, don't worry about me. I had a nice little panic while you were asleep, too."

"How long?"

"A few hours." Nick looked at something on his phone. "Big's going to have a car here for us at eight."

Nick wouldn't have given that little tidbit up himself. Judy guessed she should have known Big knew where she lived. She was as good as family, after all.

Nick got up from the edge of the bed and rummaged around in her little fridge. "What do you want to eat?"

"I don't want to eat anything," Judy said. This time it was the scene of the flattened banker, because of course it was. She wasn't as over the nausea as she thought she had been, it seemed. 

"Got to eat something," Nick said. "You have broccoli, frozen peas, and oatmeal." She watched him shake his head. "How do you keep less food around than me?"

"I'm not hungry, Nick. You're going to make me sick again."

"You'll fall over on me if you don't get something in you, Carrots." He turned to her and kicked the fridge door closed. He had a half-empty bag of broccoli. "Big's going to have food for us, too. Real rich stuff. You don't want to eat it on an empty stomach."

"How's that going to work?"

Nick's demeanor finally cracked, just a bit. He looked across the room. "I don't know. Last time we were there things were happening kind of fast. I assume there will still be some ceremony."

She'd been planning to follow his lead. They'd last left Mr. Big's on well enough terms, but she'd also spent most of her time there threatening the mobster. Best to stay as businesslike as possible, probably.

"What can we tell him?"

"Bogo left that up to me," Nick said. "Told me I'll know best what we can get away with. It's like he said before. Big's an ally, for now, and we're pretty sure he's not involved." He crinkled the bag. "Now, eat."

"Nick-"

He menaced her with a floret. "I will feed you myself, you know I will."

She sighed and took the broccoli. It was close to its expiration; crunchy but not much else. She decided it was palatable. Nick ate some, too, maybe just to encourage her.

"Thank you."

He smiled at her. That helped, too. Him just being here, just sitting in a dim room with some broccoli, was like an anchor.

"Did you ever see stuff like this? Before?"

"Once or twice. Not this bad."

"How do you do it?" She asked him.

"Not see their faces?"

Judy shivered. "Yeah."

"Aw, Carrots." His arms were warm. "I wish there were a secret."

He was so stable. She hugged him back, pushed her head underneath his chin so she could take in his soft fur and his heartbeat and the scent of her fox, the one that was different from all the others just so. 

No, this was her anchor. When she said they held each other up, this was one of the all-too-rare times she meant. She was in over her head sometimes - especially, on this case - and there was only ever the one person she could turn to. Bogo and Fangmire and everyone else knew she was a cop. From the very start with the missing mammals cases, when they'd doubted her and she'd proved them wrong, they'd assumed she'd hold up.

She hadn't done it alone, though, and everything she'd done since then she'd had help with. 

"I don't want to bring it back here," she said. "Even if it gets worse."

"Especially if it gets worse," he corrected. "But don't bottle up the stress. Don't ignore it. I tried that back when I was a kit and it took you to snap me out of it."

"Do you think it will get worse?"

Nick drew breath to reassure her. Judy felt it. But instead his arms tightened. "We'll deal with it."

\---

Big's car was unmistakable. The few vehicles that regularly passed through Judy's neighborhood were family cars, or delivery drivers. A blacked-out town car stood out like a sore claw, and Judy was self-conscious as she climbed into the backseat alongside Nick. Most of her neighbors knew she was a cop; would they recognize a crime family's car the same way?

The only other occupant was the driver, who was sadly not Manchas. The wolf greeted them, asked them to buckle their seatbelts, and ignored them for the rest of the trip. Judy spent it looking at the monogrammed cups on the mini-bar and reminiscing. It was odd how their last trip through here had turned into a fond memory.

She'd expected the iced-over study, but Mr. Big received them in a much more comfortable dining room, done up like a country kitchen. Judy's nose twitched. Something smelled appetizing.

"Judy, child! And Nicky. It's good to see you well." Big walked along the edge of the giant granite-topped dining table to greet them. 

Nick eyed Big's ring, but the shrew waved him away, impatient. "We're past that, Nicky. You're family again, or close enough. Sit. Eat."

So they sat and ate. It was vegetable soup, ladled out of a huge pot by a badger in an apron, who inclined her head in modesty when Big sampled it and declared it excellent.

Judy tried it, following Nick's lead. It was rich and hot and full of tomatoes and fresh greens, and did a good job of settling her stomach the rest of the way. There was fresh bread, too.

Even Big's entourage ate, she noticed. Each of the four massive polar bears in the corners of the room had a steaming mug of soup in paw. 

"This isn't business," Big said. "Not from ZPD's finest."

"Not your kind of business," Nick agreed. "More legal."

Big scrutinized them for a moment. Judy held his gaze as best she could. It was difficult to read such a small face. If he'd decided to take offense at the implication...

"Ha, I suppose not." He looked over to the kitchen. "Give us a few minutes, Tricia. And take some soup for yourself. Enjoy dinner."

"Of course, sir." The badger inclined her head again and dished soup into a big mug of her own. Big watched her, as if to make sure she was getting herself enough food, then winked at Judy as the kitchen door closed.

"Happy associates, happy life," he said. "In case you worry it's all icings." 

Judy found it surprisingly easy to believe him.

They laid out a stripped-down version of the case for him, sparing what details they felt they could, and those they felt they ought to at the dinner table.

"Garreline Accounting." Big tapped a claw on the arm of his chair. "There's a closed book. They've got so much red tape and paperwork I haven't bothered with them for years. I know a few cats who do business there, but unless you're already on the inside it's not worth the effort." He smiled. "For cold cash or otherwise, or so I'm told."

Nick seemed to be enjoying the verbal game. "Of course." 

"An employee there died this morning," Judy said. She swallowed. "It wasn't pretty. Apparent murder, but we're still trying to track animals of interest down."

Big pondered and slurped his soup. "This banker. Was he flattened?"

Judy nodded.

"Ah," Big said. "Boots."

His staff glanced at each other in distaste.

"Boots?" Nick asked.

Big waved. "Tell them, Koslov."

"Boots is a contract killer," the polar bear rumbled from the corner. "A rhinoceros hitman. Unprofessionally happy to do whatever intimidation or wetwork a client is willing to pay for."

Wetwork, Judy thought. How pleasant.

"So you don't associate with him," Nick said. 

"Of course not," Koslov said. His muzzle twisted. "We have standards. Boots is irresponsible and reckless, nearly psychotic. If he couldn't pay for a decent crew to follow him around and clean up after him I expect you would have caught him by now." He inclined his head to Judy. "No offense, Officer Hopps."

"This game has rules, you know that," Big said. "If you absolutely have to whack a guy, you do it yourself. Leave the family out. Don't drag in the police." He smiled at Nick. "No skunk-butt rugs."

Nick took careful interest in his soup.

"Working with Boots means ignoring reputation and fair play. It's dirty, and it marks you." Big inspected his claws. "If someone I knew paid Boots for a hit, I'd never speak to them again."

"So you don't know who he might be working for?" Judy asked.

"It's someone with a lot of money, and not a lot of scruples. But I can't tell you more."

"You've been a great help already," she told him. "Thank you for sharing what you know. I know it must be strange, cooperating with the police."

"Anything." Big waved a paw. "You're always welcome to come here and talk."

"How's Fru Fru?"

Big beamed like the proud father he was. "The happiest shrew I've ever seen. I'll tell her you stopped by."

"Thank you."

"Thank you," Big said. "And be careful. You're family, Judy, and Nick-" The crime boss nodded to himself. "You're dating family. Good enough."

They stared, both shocked into silence. Big laughed.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV Nick

_Boots._

Nick rolled the name around in his head. It wasn't much of an angle, but it was more than they'd started with last night, and maybe all those searches had turned up something.

Judy was looking a lot better, too. She'd crashed on his couch overnight at his insistence, not that she'd needed much convincing. He was glad. It was all too easy to flick back to the unsettling moments, Nick knew from experience. Judy deserved to have someone nearby when it happened.

And he liked the safety net, too, even if he wasn't about to admit that to anyone. He wasn't on his own anymore.

"That's a lot of cars, Wilde." Torren leaned on the edge of Nick's cube. "You owe the tech boys a drink. They were up all night hammering on this."

"I haven't seen anything yet."

"You check your email yet this morning?"

"No." It was a long list: timestamps, registration numbers, license plates and for most of the vehicles an attached image. He counted almost four hundred entries. Rush hour always was busy.

"I don't get why there weren't more witnesses," he said. "Nobody in the surrounding buildings sees anything, sure. Maybe. But all these drivers? Other pedestrians?"

"Mice are tiny." Torren shrugged. It went all the way to his hackles. "I could see missing the freakout during rush hour. Not easy to hear a little voice over the cars."

A pair of rabbit ears dodged past Torren's sweeping tail into their cubicle. Judy had brought his coffee back, just the way he liked it: aged in the pot overnight and strong enough to strip the paint off the walls. She put her own mug on the desk and climbed into her seat.

"Hey, Hopps."

"Torren." Judy craned over Nick's shoulder to read the screen. "Sort by scale. Narrow it down to the big ones."

The wolf looked between them, as if he could smell the lead. He probably did. "Did you two get anything out of that mobster last night?"

Judy's left ear rotated toward Nick. It was a signal, or he was pretty sure it was: _I follow your lead._ She was getting better at reading these situations.

"A name, maybe. I want to try to pin it down before we chase it too far, though."

"We are racing the clock. Fang's got a list of likely next targets."

"Then we can't really afford to miss, can we?" Nick waved a paw at the screen. "We'll cross these with what we know so far. Give us a few minutes."

"Sure," Torren said. "I'll go bang my head against Garreline some more. Let me know what you find."

They watched him go. Nick looked to Judy.

"What?" She asked.

"You giving me outs now? It's not like the name's going to hurt to share."

She shrugged and sipped her coffee, half-caf with creamer so it wouldn't buzz her up too much. "I know how you just love attention. And the less people know I know about Big, the better, probably. I think we're the special case."

"Sly bunny."

"Smart fox. Good call with the cars."

"I don't know how much it's going to pay off," Nick said. It was 40 entries after he trimmed it to just the vehicles large enough to hold rhinos. "Help me with these plate numbers? I bet we're faster with forty than Flash is with one."

\---

It was not the most persuasive profile they'd ever put together. The license list had coughed up four rhinos. They had semi-reliable eyewitness testimony with zero cross-references, a player's street name from a crime boss and whatever physical support the forensics team had turned up from the scene itself, and Nick wasn't going to look at that.

Bogo didn't look thrilled, either. He'd gotten up to pace behind his desk while Judy laid it out for him. Fangmire, along for the pitch thanks to his status as team lead on the case, sat against the edge of the desk and watched Bogo.

"You say Big doesn't deal with him personally?" Bogo asked when she was through.

Nick nodded. "And I'm inclined to believe it. He might be a crime boss, but like you said - his thing is money, not murder."

"My hooves are a bit tied," Bogo said. "I can't authorize surveillance on a group of very _similar_ residents without something more concrete, but it's not like that's your fault." He pointed at Judy with the folder. "This is good for us, though. I'll take a shaky angle over no angle any day. Nice work, Hopps."

Judy smiled and glanced at Nick, but he just dipped his nose at her. She deserved all of the credit for this file, as far as he was concerned. He just rode along and had good ideas once in a while.

"We're working on the paper trail side," Fangmire said. "Garreline's still a brick wall, because the judges never move quickly when the banks are involved, but we're starting to get patterns out of the victims."

"Don't lose momentum now, people," Bogo said. "Drill down to their favorite pasta joints if you have to, but we need something we can move on. Can you get me the three most likely next victims by today?"

"We'll get it done," Fangmire said.

"Good." Bogo gave Fangmire the case file. "Go with him, you two. He'll be assigning you as he sees fit from here on out."

They trooped out of Bogo's office. Fangmire looked over the file, and even now he couldn't stop a flicker of distaste in his ears.

"You two holding up? This isn't a pretty start to murder investigations."

"Someone's got to do it," Judy said.

"Fair enough," he said. "Thanks for getting us in with the mob, Wilde. Chief can't say it, and I know we aren't committing too hard to it right now, but I think this lead is the one we needed to crack this thing."

"No problem." Nick was happy to let the assumption go uncorrected, because Judy was right. He'd rather not make her deal with those expectations. "Maybe don't make a habit of it, though."

"Well, we don't often get a case like this. This is the worst it's been since the predator incident."

They gathered by Fangmire's desk. Torren was at the computer opposite, muttering something about financials. Marki the snow leopard was here too, from wherever she usually worked. Nick still wasn't all that familiar with everyone at the precinct; all he knew of Marki was she did a bit of everything.

She held out a notepad to Fangmire as they approached. "Last twenty-four hours of calls from every banker on our watch list so far."

He looked through it. "Anything on these matched numbers?"

"We're getting the signatures to look into them."

"The rest of the new info is yours." Fangmire looked down at Nick and Judy.

"We got a possible name on a rhino suspect," Nick said. "Boots. Not his real name, of course, but nobody I know knows what his real name is. My contacts tell me he's a bit of a loose cannon, even for the underground. Most don't like associating with him."

The cats looked on seriously, but Judy rolled her eyes. Nick grinned.

"Not very inventive," Torren said. "Heard of him at all, Marki?"

"No."

"Okay, just asking." He gave up at the keyboard. "I think they design these bank systems specifically to keep law enforcement out, because I'm not getting anywhere in their records."

"Potential targets, then," Fangmire said. "There are good odds we're racing at least one of the families on these bank deals, so we'll focus on what we can control before they start getting rid of more loose ends. Chief wants the three most likely hits." He indicated the list. "And thanks to these phone records, that looks like one employee at each of Garreline's three biggest branches. Tundratown-"

"I'll take it," Marki said, before Torren could open his mouth to suggest she take it. The wolf grimaced.

"-Sahara Square and Downtown. Hopps, you and Wilde take the branch nearest here. Just observation for now. You see anything suspicious, call it in. And keep an eye out for rhinos, just in case."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some new faces here!  
> Officer Miguel Torren - male Timberwolf, Fangmire's partner.  
> Captain Charles Fangmire - male Tiger, investigation lead. (Not technically an OC, but I have fleshed him out a lot, and incorrectly: According to [Disney's writers,](https://twitter.com/thejaredbush/status/709994080491667457) a) his name is spelled Fangmeyer and b) his species is wolf. I hope you can excuse the canon twists. Alternatively, just pretend it's someone completely different with a similar last name.)  
> Sergeant Shassa Marki - female Snow Leopard, former Peacekeeper.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV Nick

By the second day, Nick had seen the same streets so many times he expected he could drive the four-block radius around Garreline's downtown branch at full speed, in reverse, with a blindfold on. He'd stopped saying so around eleven that morning, when Judy slammed the brakes and threatened to make him walk behind the cruiser for a while.

She looked to be holding up just fine, sitting straight up in her boosted driver's seat, checking every intersection and watching her mirrors with every lane change. Nick slouched against the window, just to even it out a bit.

"Everyone down here is going to remember this cruiser now," he said. "I want this to break open just so we can stop being the obvious cops."

"If I didn't know better, I'd say Torren's impatience was rubbing off on you," Judy said.

"I resent the familial implication. Wolves are really nothing like foxes."

"I thought you liked being the smooth cop," she said.

"It does have its moments. Most of the time we're not staring at the same bankers doing the same thing every day, though. I'm starting to see why they make good financiers."

Judy, maybe in a measure of pity, parked them in a reserved civic vehicle spot on the side of the road. "Let's walk it, then."

They ambled so their route took them across the front and the back of Garreline a few times. They got a few waves, a few smiles of recognition from prey types and the occasional predator. Judy returned each one; Nick would just give a peace officer's _hello-citizen-nice-to-see-you_ expression behind his mirrored glasses until whoever it was moved on.

Sure, the prey supremacy incident had been important, and their roles in it instrumental, but Nick was ready to stop getting noticed for it. He'd spent two decades making an art of staying out of the spotlight, and he preferred it that way. It made everything so much easier, even on this side of the blue line. Especially on a case like this.

But he had to grin and bear it when the pig shopkeeper shook his paw and thanked him for 'helping broaden horizons for everyone in the city.' He felt his horizons were already plenty broad. He'd joined ZPD, hadn't he? He was serving the populace instead of leeching off it, being more than he had been.

Of course, his rabbit partner had a lot to do with the new width to his horizons, too.

Judy nudged him when they finally extricated themselves. "You sleep wrong, or something? You're frosty today. They're just people."

"I don't mind people, technically," he said. "Some days they talk to me, though, and that gets exhausting."

The clock at the curb tolled noon. They watched the line of bankers trundle out the front door on their way to lunch.

"Would you rather be back here selling two-buck pawpsicles? You know I watched you do that one day."

"It had a certain rakish innocence to it."

Judy rolled her eyes. "You make better money now."

"Yeah, but the taxes are killer." Nick took advantage of his glasses to look over the activity without staring straight at it. Their mark here had a streak of tawny fur over one eye, like an extra eyebrow. None of these lemmings matched the description.

Judy had made a note to the same effect on her pad. "He's working straight into quitting time again?"

"He did yesterday. The day before, too, I'd bet. These little guys are as routine as they come. Deviation is going to pop right out at us."

Judy looked troubled. "You're not wrong, exactly, but it presumes a lot. They're people, not machines."

Nick looked the bankers over again. Except for their fur patterns, he couldn't see much of a difference. They wore the same suits, all held their paws the same way as they walked. Most of them had matched cadence. They followed their leaders without question. Nick had taken advantage of that little quirk, once upon a lifetime.

Still, he tried to see it for Judy's sake, tried to look past the biology and species habits the way he'd managed to look past his own. Any one of these lemmings had unique thoughts going in their head, wanted different things, had dreams beyond leaving for lunch with the same crowd at the same time every day.

Judy watched, too, apparently oblivious to the introspection she'd kicked off. "I don't see any rhinos around, either."

"I don't think our suspect is likely to try for a hit in the middle of lunch rush. Too many witnesses."

They tailed the bankers for a block at a discreet distance anyway, focusing on the animals around them. There was a decent mix in this part of the city, predators and prey at all scales. There were two rhinos on the route, too. Nick watched Judy watch them as they passed, ears at careful attention, like she was trying not to notice. Her eyes were on their feet. He held his tongue.

"Hopps, dispatch."

She snapped her radio off her belt. "Go ahead."

"Fang wants to talk to you soonest," Clawhauser said. "Someplace quiet."

Judy glanced up at Nick. "On our way."

They sat in the parked cruiser and waited for the call. Judy was a little less upright in her seat now. She flicked the console controls and watched her side-view mirror pan up and down.

"You good?" Nick asked.

She grimaced at him and glanced at the duty camera sitting on the the dash. It was always running, which made it hard to have frank conversations in the car. They had to be oblique sometimes.

"I'm all right," she eventually said. "I tell myself it's a matter of scale, but I don't know if that's enough. It still feels like profiling."

Nick nodded. He'd gotten it right, then, not that there was any satisfaction in reading her so closely this time. "Scale is valid, if that helps. Some of us are just at a higher risk of getting stepped on."

Judy's ears fell the rest of the way. "I'm not sure it does help."

"Fangmire to downtown."

Saved by the radio. Nick took the pawset. "Captain?"

"The warrants came through for these phones. The tech guys took a van out this morning and already have some nuggets for us."

"That was fast."

"They tell me these Stingray things do most of the heavy lifting themselves. It's probably for the best, too. Our Sahara Square guy is going to be making a couple trips across the city starting tomorrow, way out of his routine. That's an opportunity."

Judy's face had clouded over. Nick glanced at her. "Where to?"

"A place called Understory, in Rainforest District. Chief wants us to all get set up on location. Second teams will come in to handle surveillance on the rest of the targets."

"Ten minutes back, maybe," Judy murmured. She started the engine.

"We can be back within ten," Nick told the radio.

"Don't bother," Fangmire said. "Torren and I will start getting the gear we need. You two head over to Understory and see what you can find out about the layout, and you can hand it off to us this afternoon. We'll send you this data."

"Roger. 'Soon-to-be-rainforest,' out."

Judy had taken them back into traffic. Nick hung up the radio and decided maybe he was going to buckle his seatbelt after all. She was driving with more of a purpose than usual this time.

"What?" He asked her.

Her ears swung a bit as she checked her mirrors and ducked in front of a delivery van. "We tapped his phone?"

"With a warrant. And Zootopia's a single-party consent municipality. But you know that."

"Doesn't mean I like it," Judy said. "He doesn't get any warning. He just has to trust us to do our jobs."

"It's a good thing you're good at yours, then."

She swallowed. "Last guy who didn't get any warning ended up flattened."

It was unlike her to balk. This was all standard procedure, even if it was in the face of non-standard stakes. Judy had always thrived on the former, from the moment they'd met. Heck, she'd taken advantage of those single-party recording laws to sucker him into her life in the first place.

It meant the latter was the problem, and he couldn't blame her for being rattled. Scale was indeed an issue, and all tangled up with species divides and biological predispositions and everything else that made their jobs difficult. And the more it weighed on her, Nick suspected, the more it would weigh on him.

There wasn't much he could say to it right now, though, not with that camera on the dash. When he had time, he'd suggest it to her. Maybe when this was all over the actually could get Bogo to sign off on a few days of parking duty.

\---

Nick couldn't name a single financial institution in the Rainforest District, now that he thought about it. It wasn't the kind of place where that business went down. Crime here tended to be of the more direct variety, and a bit more frequent than rates in the rest of the city on account of how things got _rinsed_ more often.

Not that anyone would guess there was a crime problem, looking at Understory. The muted neon said it was a jazz club, tucked into a row of similar business buildings that tried to blend into the forest environment on the edge of the district. There was an alley in back, and a row of tall apartment buildings across the street. The sidewalks were quiet in the near-constant drizzle. Nick was thankful for that. Nobody was likely to wave at them here. He held the door for Judy.

The interior was comfortable, with lots of tree-bark walls and light that was dim without being an impediment to those with poor night vision. The little stage at the back was quiet; apart from a couple people grabbing lunch and the jaguar staffing the bar, it was deserted.

"Want a sandwich or something?" Nick asked as they crossed the mismatched scales of empty tables.

Judy's ears were back up now, at least. She shook her head, eyes on the staff. "Maybe later."

"Afternoon, officers," the cat said. "How can I help you?"

Judy's ear twitched.

"Nick, Wilde, ZPD." He glanced down at Judy's neutral expression. Nice and easy, then. Start with the technical truth. "Officer Hopps and I are working a financial investigation."

"To do with Understory?"

"With clientele. We've got reason to believe someone involved in the case could be stopping through here in the next couple days. Do you have a minute to answer some questions?"

ZPD didn't have any reason to believe the club was exceptional but as a meeting place, so Nick left most of the specifics out. Still, the jaguar was just what he seemed: the afternoon shift worker with little knowledge of the club's usual evening patrons. He hadn't remembered any rhinoceros coming through, and he just shook his head at the mugshot of the lemming banker Judy showed him.

"You might talk to Merc, though. He's been here the last couple nights; he might recognize more faces."

"Merc?"

"Yeah, Mercury. Mercury Caffrey. He's been playing nights here for about a week now."

"No way," Nick said. His ears came full forward. It was the smallest of worlds sometimes. "Big cougar?"

He nodded. "He might be in back, actually. I'll go check."

Judy looked back and forth at Nick and the retreating jaguar. "Is there anybody you don't know?"

"This is me, remember?" Nick shook his head. "Mercury was almost a scoundrel like I was, too. I haven't seen him for a few years, though. Good to know he's doing okay."

The jaguar had disappeared behind the stage curtain. Nick turned so his back was to the rest of the people in the room. "What do you think of the place?"

"A bit hard to see in here."

"Easy enough to bottle up, if it comes to that," Nick said.

She rotated one ear at him and one at the patrons on the other side of the room. "Keep your voice down."

"It is down. Your hearing is just excellent."

The barman emerged from backstage and returned to his station. Following him was a muscular cougar with sharp eyes and street clothes that did nothing to disguise a parade-ground gait. When he spotted them, he gave a deep chuckle.

"Nick Wilde, gone straight. I don't believe it."

"That's two of us." Nick shook his paw. "Mercury. How's life treating you?"

"Never better, thanks to you."

"This is my partner, Judy Hopps. We're working on leads in a financial case."

"Always a pleasure to meet someone smarter than Nick." Judy's paw vanished in his giant one. She seemed taken aback at the politeness, but her amusement as she glanced at Nick was genuine. "Mercury Caffrey, at your service. Come on, sit down."

\---

"So you covered for him?" Judy asked. She grinned across the table at Nick. "You softie. Where was that when I met you?"

Nick spread his paws and tried to ignore Merc's laughter. "It kind of fell into my lap. The gang he was following around started stripping a ZPD bait car right in front of me. It was either ignore it and let them crash into all of us, or take him with me and clear out before they started arresting people."

"It gave us both a bit more of an alibi," Mercury said.

"I could tell he was different," Nick said. "These guys were rough, real nasty looking types. Merc was too big, too polite to be mixed up with the fringe."

"We made it a couple blocks and then I heard shooting start," Mercury said. He stared at the table. "It snapped me out of it, eventually. Made me realize I could do a lot better than being hired muscle somewhere. Playing jazz clubs isn't much, but it's a lot better than what I was messing around with. Between that and my 'Keeper pension I'm doing okay."

"That's good to hear," Judy said. "You'll be happy to know you get immunity for anything you might or might not have done once upon a time. I might have to chew out Nick, though."

Merc laughed. "I'll bet. He needs someone keeping him in line, too."

"We'll have to come back when we're not so busy," Nick said. "I didn't know you played, but now I want to hear it."

"Please do." Merc smiled. It went all the way down to his tail. "Live music every Friday and on weekends. Joe and the guys I work with are really good, too. We're talking to the tourism council about some concerts downtown now that the weather is nice again."

They walked the perimeter of the dining room. Merc was happy to show them the place while Judy scribbled notes. There were two entrances: double doors in the front and a single service entrance to the alley. There was a little kitchen off the bar, a set of bathrooms on the other end of the room and a tiny backstage behind the mandatory red curtain on the dais. It was mostly filled with an old upright piano. Merc looked to be in the process of reassembling parts of it.

"So I know this wasn't your idea," he said. He toyed with a ratcheting wrench. "How did Officer Hopps rope you into becoming a cop?"

"She out-hustled me," Nick said. "It was a thing of beauty, really. She cornered me for tax evasion, a lot of really boring stuff happened, and next thing I know I'd graduated from police academy."

Judy snorted. "He's not as smart as he looks," she told Mercury. "You're right about him needing a chaperone. This was the easiest way."

"About time he got a break. He paid it forward." Merc pointed the ratchet at Nick, who shifted on the spot. He wasn't wrong, but Nick still wasn't used to getting called out for doing something unambiguously good. Merc's easy conviction was uncomfortable.

"What brings you down here?" Merc asked.

"Odd finances," Judy said, before Nick could open his mouth. "Bankers getting tangled up in things they shouldn't be." She flicked open the picture. "Seen this guy before? He might be around in the next 72 hours."

"Afraid not," Merc said. "But I'll keep an eye out. Will you be around if I ever can point him out?"

Judy glanced at Nick. "Probably."

"Just carry on," Nick said. "This shouldn't take more than a couple of days. We don't expect a whole lot of trouble, but we don't know just what we're dealing with yet."

"Right." Merc chewed his lip. His tail chased itself around like a gymnast's ribbon. "If I can help at all-"

"You showed us around," Nick said. "That's plenty. We're square, as far as I'm concerned."

"You saved my life, technically," Merc said. "This is that serious?"

"We don't know." Nick shook his paw again. "Just keep your head down."

They ordered sandwiches to go, to thank the jaguar for being so accommodating, and walked out in the mist to check the exterior.

"You loosened up pretty fast," Nick said.

"You like him, so I figure I can, too."

Nick took a bite of his sandwich. Whatever he'd specified - something called a 'junkyard' - had banana peppers. It was tasty.

"That was a good thing you did," Judy said.

"What, warning him?"

"That." Judy nodded. "And getting him off the streets, too. He didn't look like someone that needed much help at first."

"He left the Peacekeepers on a medical discharge for PTSD before he got caught up with the wrong crowd," Nick said. "Told me one firefight he just locked up. He can't even look at guns anymore. The night I met him wasn't pretty."

"But you helped." Judy worked on her sandwich, looking satisfied. "I knew you were worth bringing around."

The moisture out here was beading on his fur, but Nick felt plenty warm right then.

"I'll update Fangmire," Judy said, all business again. "After we look around back."

It was an unremarkable alley, with evenly spaced loading docks for deliveries and about half the streetlights burnt out.

"One team down here, one in the club, and Marki on the roof opposite." Judy turned in place and sketched a quick map. "It should work."

"Why the roof?"

"She's our best shot," Judy said. "Former special forces. You've never been down to the ranges? It's a bit of a spectator thing when she's practicing."

"I wouldn't think she likes the attention." Nick shook his head. He really didn't know ZPD well yet at all. "What's an ex-PSF sniper doing with the police?"

Judy nudged him. "Anyone can be anything, remember? What's a reformed conman doing solving murder cases?"

"Looking out for a certain rabbit," Nick said, and smiled as her ears telegraphed the embarrassment she tried to hide. "Come on. The sooner we get this to Fang the sooner we can clock out for the day. Stay at my place tonight?"

"So forward, Mr. Wilde."

"Just thinking about what Big said the other day."

Judy flushed. "Don't hurt yourself doing it, fox."

"We'll just ignore that we each spend half our time on the other's couch, then."

 _"We are on duty."_ Judy emphasized each word with a balled fist into Nick's side. But she was smiling back.

It was good to be able to distract her, or at least occupy her with things that didn't make her ears droop. The job was messy sometimes, but it didn't have to be all they thought about. It meant a lot to Judy to be able to make a difference, without the equivocation or social baggage, and if Nick could help her do that he would. Especially since what helped her would help him, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mercury Caffrey - male Cougar, former Peacekeeper, now plays jazz trumpet.
> 
> The Stingrays Fangmire mentions are an umbrella term for [IMSI catchers](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/09/21/how-stingray-devices-work/), which law enforcement can use to simulate cell towers, track GSM cellphones and in some cases [intercept traffic from them in real time.](https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=9aa2169a324ae7a1a747c2ca8f540cb3&tab=core&_cview=0)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV Judy

The ground vibrated, like the stampedes they always warned would happen sometimes when herd animals got spooked. But there was no rumble behind the vibration. It was just one set of feet, as far as Judy could tell.

She paused in the dark street and perked her ears. Someone big was moving fast on the other side of these houses. This was the wrong neighborhood for something that scale, the wrong time of night for someone to be in such a hurry. Her cop senses tingled.

The shaking carried on as she approached the corner and looked around it, but the street was still deserted. Whoever it was should have appeared by now.

The street she'd come down was quiet, too, dark but for a couple lights on in the facing apartment windows. The curtains were open in one of them. A mouse looked out onto the street, frowning at the mounting disturbance. There was something familiar about her.

Judy took a couple steps back toward the window, away from the corner.

It was Leila Winston, the widow.

The shaking threatened to unseat Judy's paws now, as whatever - whoever - caused in drew closer, around the corner onto the cross street, coming toward her.

She couldn't move. She was frozen, staring at Winston's contorting features, unable to turn around and confront the noise. She sensed a great rushing potential right behind and above her-

And roared awake in a tangle of light sheeting. She was in Nick's apartment, lying on her couch by the window, staring at the inactive can lights set into the ceiling.

_Now_ her heart triphammered, beats so strong she could feel them all the way in her toes. Judy felt herself heat up. Her breathing deepened.

"Carrots, you okay?"

Judy froze. Nick appeared over the back of the couch, his fur disheveled from sleep.

"Just a dream," she panted, as much to reassure herself as him.

Judy closed her eyes. She'd brought it home. Not voluntarily, but it was here all the same. Clearly she wasn't as over it as she liked to think. She might have stopped seeing Winston, or the remains of Winston's husband, every time she closed her eyes, but her unconscious mind wasn't going to be as cooperative.

It was irrational, she scolded herself. A fear of getting stepped on was mostly baseless, not like the fear of foxes or badgers that had at least some instinctual grounding. And she was faster than any rhino, even if she was small. There was nothing to worry about.

"Nothing to worry about," she repeated aloud.

"Uh-huh. I heard your breathing change."

"I'm sorry I woke you," she said.

He waved it away and climbed down off his bed over the back of the couch to sit next to her. "I spent years napping with one eye open. Not your fault."

He just sat there and radiated reassurance, almost as much as he was radiating warmth from where he'd curled up under his own sheets. The fur on his chest was thick under her paws. She pressed herself close.

They hadn't had much opportunity to do this, and truth be told Judy was comfortable keeping it unofficial and unacknowledged for now. They were still tentative around each other, unsure of what got the other to respond, what constituted too far, too fast. They never did talk about it. It just happened.

"Was it about the case?" Nick murmured in her ear.

"I'm sorry, Nick." She couldn't look at him, not even now that he was trying to capture her eyes. She wasn't about to fill his mind with the images that rattled around in hers. He probably dealt with his own night terrors.

He finally huffed in resignation and gave up trying to stare her down. "Fine. Then I'm not going anywhere."

"We said we shouldn't bring it home."

"I can't exactly get angry at your brain chemistry," Nick said. He squeezed her to show her he didn't mind. "Not even the neurologists know how that works yet."

She let him bear her down so she was lying on the couch again, her nose to the crook of the cushions. Nick curled around her, solid and protective and so warm Judy thought she might melt. His tail came up in front of them and she hugged that close, too.

It was so much, but it wasn't enough. Judy knew she had to tell him what worried her, if she was really going to recover, but right now she couldn't bring herself to. Right now she felt selfish and grateful and exhausted and like the luckiest rabbit alive, and she couldn't bring herself to damage that with a confession. She couldn't hurt her fox like that.

Nick misinterpreted her shiver, tightening his arms around her.

"I think about the day we met," he said. "The little things. About scamming you out of jumbo-pops and how nice it will be to spend the day writing parking tickets together when this is all over."

It was like a blade of pure bittersweet guilt to the gut. Judy screwed her eyes up.

"We will. Promise."

\---

The stupid eyeglasses kept slipping down her short muzzle. Judy should have found a pair of the straps rabbits tended to use to keep such things in place. She swore the amount of time she spent adjusting them made it look like she had a nervous tic.

Maybe that fiction was a good thing. She was plenty nervous, but the glasses had little to do with it. She'd never done undercover before. It was hard to shake the feeling everyone recognized her, from the barman to half the patrons in the room and even Mercury, up on stage.

The cougar had looked her way when she arrived. She'd seen the recognition but he'd done a good job of burying it. He was occupied now, playing some slow ballad on the trumpet with the rest of his quartet. He was good at it, too. She would have loved to sit and listen, if she didn't have to keep an eye on everything else in the club.

She and Fangmire were packed around a table near the bar, with a big decorative screen of jungle plants and climbing ivy between them and it. The vantage gave them a good line on both of the doors, and most everyone else who was here tonight.

"Thirty minutes inside the window," came Torren's voice in her ear.

"Relax." Fangmire leaned back in his chair, making it creak. "If he shows, he shows. Marki will call him out."

Unless he came in the back entrance. Judy glanced over at the closed door, just in case.

They were in plainclothes, something appropriate for a night visit to a casual jazz club, with collars high enough to conceal the throat mics and - in Fangmire's case - enough bagginess to cover up a taser or two. Judy would be relying on him if things went sideways.

Nick and Torren were parked in the sensor van at the end of the block, where most of the traffic came into the neighborhood. Marki was three stories up on the roof opposite the main entrance with a rifle, probably staring straight through the front doors the way she had been since they started tonight.

And there was no sign of either of their targets. They'd looked over everyone who'd come in. There was a city-average spread of predators and prey, all different species, but no lemmings or rhinos yet.

The song ended. Everyone applauded. Judy joined in, to cover what she was convinced was anxious fidgeting. Her glasses slipped again. The one upside to Nick not being here was he couldn't laugh at her for it.

"You're doing fine," Fangmire said, locally.

"Thanks. It's hard to act natural."

"Shh." Fangmire smiled. It was all teeth. "Everyone will do their jobs."

"Vehicle," Marki sent, as if to prove the point. "Rhino scale match."

Judy looked to the front doors as casually as she could. Her audio feed was a little magnetic bauble designed to look like a piece of jewelry halfway up one of her ears. She was certain everyone else was looking at it, too.

They waited. Judy watched a set of headlights pass out front in the fog. It seemed to take a while to get to the end of the block.

"It's clear."

The next song started up. Judy tried to mirror Fang's nonchalance and sat back in her chair. Her scan of the room had turned up three places a rhino might hide out in the shadows. She kept checking them, just in case, imagining a big, baleful animal waiting there for the right moment.

"We haven't looked at motive," she said. "We think he's a tool, right? Just a means to an end. But who's directing him, and why?"

"One step at a time," Fangmire said. "It's kind of academic, for us. We just need it to stop. Let the DA handle the why."

The tiger's experience was an asset on a case like this. He was helping balance her, teaching her what to look for and where to focus. The stakes didn't seem to faze him as much. She watched him watch Mercury's band.

"They're really good."

"Nick knew the cougar up there a while back, but it's new to me, too."

"He knows everybody." Fang moved his eyes on, taking in the same shadows Judy had. "Would you come back here? If you weren't working?"

"What, with Nick?"

"At all." He rotated a finger to encompass the whole club. "Once I work a place it's harder for me. I can't stop with the angles."

Judy checked the shadows again. "I don't know yet. I'd like to try."

"Let me know if it works." Fang watched the bartender bustle in and out of the kitchen through their vine screen. "I'll bet you'll draw less attention without the muscle."

Even when he was leaning back in his chair, he couldn't really disguise his upright bearing. His eyes never relaxed, either. Judy wondered if it would start happening to her, the more time she spent undercover.

Some of the other attendees did glance over at them occasionally. Judy had looked elsewhere whenever she noticed. Fang tended to gaze right back, until whoever was showing interest in them realized they were staring at the huge tiger and the little rabbit. There were a couple of deer over in the corner being persistent, though.

"We're not fooling everyone, are we?" she asked.

"You never can," Fangmire said. "Someone always assumes we're cops. Or something else."

Oh. Judy looked up at him and chewed her lip. She'd never considered the implications of their being here in casual dress.

"Vehicle, rodent-scale," Marki said.

Judy's mind jumped back to the professional task at hand with gratifying swiftness. She looked to the door.

"Stingray running," Torren sent. Hardware in the surveillance van would impersonate a cell tower. If their mark's phone was nearby, it would accept the fake signal and let them pinpoint his location.

"Past the front doors."

This one was too small for Judy to see drive by.

"No match on the phone." It was Nick. Funny how a scratchy radio message from him was still enough to warm her up a bit.

"Clear," Marki said.

"Standing down again." Static from Torren's sigh hissed over the channel. "Wake us if you need us."

Fangmire rolled his eyes at Judy. "Apologize to Wilde for me tonight, will you? Torren's enough to make anyone go spare."

"I'm sure he can handle it," Judy said. "He'll probably consider it a challenge."

With the channel dead, her thoughts wandered again. She couldn't help it. It was unprofessional and risky, but now she was trying to look at them as an outsider might, too: not as undercover police but as a couple. An unprecedented, flagrant pairing. Fangmire's patterned forearms stretched the rolled cuffs of his casual shirt. They were as big around as her entire torso. No wonder they were getting attention.

"I know it's weird for you," she started.

"No worries, Hopps." He smiled at her and turned to flatten his ears at the deer that were still staring at them. They jumped as if stung and finally tore their eyes away. Fangmire tapped a claw on the padding of the armored vest under his shirt. "We prepare for people assuming we're cops. It's just as good for us if they assume something else."

"As long as it doesn't bother you personally."

He studied the table. "Even if it did, I'd still do my job."

"Fang-"

He waved it away. "Like I said, it doesn't. You and Wilde, you make a good team. You sure opened my eyes."

Judy blinked.

"Rhino on foot," Marki snapped.

They focused again. It was a physical thing. "Where?"

"Coming from the northeast. At the doors in ten."

Fangmire sat up straight again: not ramrod, but enough that his draw wouldn't get fouled if he needed it. "Nice and easy."

The door creaked over the bass solo. Judy was watching the stage, but she was listening to both at once.

"Stingray rolling, just in case," Torren said. "Still nada."

They still had no idea what their suspect looked like. Judy risked a casual glance. He was a well-dressed rhino, alone. A bit small for megafauna.

He went to the bar, dropped a bill in the tip jar and left with a glass of something fizzy. They watched him find an unoccupied seat near the back, check his phone and settle in to watch the stage.

"What have you got?" Torren asked.

"We don't know if we have anything." Fangmire's quiet baritone countered Torren's excitement. "Just watch that scanner."

Small talk was banished. They sat for three songs, reacting along with the crowd. Marki kept calling vehicles and Torren updated them on his cell phone status every thirty seconds, which did nothing to help Judy's apprehension. Nick was probably rankled, too.

The rhino drained half his drink in twenty minutes. Judy wasn't sure she'd blinked. But Fangmire hadn't given her any feedback, so she kept at it. Somewhere in there Marki had yelled at Torren so he'd switch around and stop filling the channel with negatives.

Their target eventually got companions. A porcupine and two otters showed up with their own drinks, and they sat, making idle conversation and by all other appearances simply enjoying the music.

"What do you think?" Fangmire murmured. "I'm not seeing much of a match here."

"We don't know what constitutes a match yet," Judy said. "But you're right, there aren't any warning signs."

"And still no target." He frowned and jumped back on the radio. "Everyone stand back down for now. This might be a false positive."

They watched until the band wrapped its set, and after that, when the club started to clear out. Judy and Fangmire made busy while patrons passed them, and made special note of the rhino as he left. When he was gone, Judy looked for Mercury, but it seemed he was already backstage.

"It happens," Fangmire said later, when they worked their way down the street toward the sensor van. "Patience is as much a part of this as being in the right place at the right time."

The air was fresh and cool. Judy put away the offending eyeglasses and cleared her head as best she could. They had no result, but it wasn't for lack of vigilance. They hadn't screwed up yet. Nobody was dead, as far as they knew, and that counted for something.

"Yes, sir."

"You did good work tonight, Hopps. Grab Wilde and go home. Maybe see if Marki wants a ride. Rally's in 36."

She fought a smile. She still didn't know what he was thinking for sure, but the way Fangmire said home made it sound so pleasantly singular. And it wasn't like he was wrong.

Torren was in discussion with two techs who were rotating in to keep up surveillance overnight, just in case. She found Nick sitting in the open door at the back of the van, a smear of familiar russet among the dark colors of the night. He smiled.

"Hey, Carrots."

"You look tired."

"Torren has _opinions_ ," Nick said. He scratched the inside of one ear. "I'm betting Fang didn't try to talk your head off."

No, but what they had discussed had been enlightening. Now wasn't the place to get into it with Nick, though, and she wasn't sure he would want to hear it anyway. "We kept busy. Where's Marki?"

"Took off already."

"What, on foot?" To be fair, the snow leopard had probably gone stir-crazy after five hours sitting in the drizzle, staring at a commercial storefront. But it was a long, wet way back to HQ.

Nick shrugged elaborately. "She looked even less interested in hanging around Torren than I was. I told her she could sign her gun into our cruiser. Do you want to take it back?"

Nick dozed in the passenger seat. Judy poked him out of the car when they arrived, and hauled a gun case as tall as she was to the armory herself to sign it in. They left the rest of their gear in their desk lockers and went to Nick's apartment since it was closer.

He checked his locks, they stripped their armor and that was all they had time for. Surveillance was as taxing and stressful as anything else they did, in its own way. Judy was happy to hold back on the things she wanted to talk about if Nick was, and he looked exhausted enough for both of them. His ears were flagging.

Still, a certain static jumped between them when she met his gaze. She paused short of her couch, at the foot of his bed, and took Nick's paw.

"You good, fox?"

"You're not supposed to have to ask me that," he said, and rubbed the top of his nose. "Long day."

He let her hug him, as if he were the one drawing strength from her for once. Judy made a vain attempt to settle her mind and vowed not to make things any harder for him tonight.

Nick deserved to know. About her nightmares; about Fangmire especially. That had to do as much with him as with her. But they could wait, for now. She could sense he wanted quiet relief, and she wanted to be the anchor he wrapped around, too.

On the couch, she curled up in the hollow of his body and again he surrounded her with his warmth and scent and reassuring slow heartbeat. His muzzle tapped the top of her head in gratitude.

But she lay awake in his arms long after his breathing slowed down.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV Judy

They got bagels and coffee, the way they always did on their weekends, and took a tram to Fallside Heights. The nice part of town. There was a little park up here, overlooking the waterfalls and the rest of the city. They liked to walk the morning paths and fantasize about moving up here some day, just as soon as their combined salaries quadrupled and they could afford rent on one of the little corner units by the glassed-in atriums.

Nick hadn't known what to make of that notion at first. It had taken him a while to come around to Judy's interest in even short-term cohabitation, to square what the world expected of him with what he wanted. Their unguarded moments proved he would stay close to her when he could, but she knew it was a fine line even now. Especially now. Nick valued their privacy, and that was why she needed to tell him.

She'd fought him on it before, Judy told herself, and they'd come through it okay. It was even more important they sort this one out together.

"You'll get tired of the sensor van real quick," Nick said. He was working on his favorite, cheese and lox on blueberry. It was disgusting. "No room to stretch your legs, really, and Fang's big."

"I'm small," Judy said. "It'll work out. And I won't have to pretend to not be a cop."

"Did you wear the glasses?" he asked.

"Yes, and they were awful."

"You never could slouch convincingly." Nick hunched his shoulders and swept his tail a bit wider. It was like flicking a switch. He was the fox she'd met all those months ago, tricking her into stepping into wet cement again.

"That's eerie."

I've had practice." Police Nick straightened again and took a bite of bagel. "But I'm worried about Torren. He thinks he's funnier than I am, and it's going to cause a scene if I strangle him for it in there."

"Is it that bad?"

"He grates on me," Nick admitted. "But I'll get over it, probably. After this one, I'll remind Fang I'd rather work with you."

Judy picked at the seeds on her everything bagel. If ever there were a straight line...

"He knows, I think."

"I mean, it's for the best that each team gets someone with more experience."

"About us, I mean."

Judy wished the way his ears flattened wouldn't twist at her. They spent a few steps in silence.

"What did he ask?"

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing concrete. He just implied he didn't have a problem with interspecies relationships. Said we make a good team."

Nick looked down at her, and the eye contact wasn't as painful as it could have been. He didn't need to point out the idea of breaking predator-prey lines was so rare, so fraught as to be taboo. He knew it wasn't going to stop her. Or him, for that matter.

"It won't be pretty," he said. He inspected his bagel and appeared to change his mind about taking a bite.

"I'm not expecting it to be," Judy said. "But I'm not going anywhere."

Nick tried to smile at her parroted line.

They found an overlook out next to the falls that gave the neighborhood its name. The water rushed by underneath them, quieter than Judy expected thanks to some trick of engineering. You probably couldn't even hear it from inside the nearby condos.

"You should know, then." Nick finished chewing on whatever had furrowed his brow. "Torren talks. He gave me a lot of shit for that night he found us at your apartment."

"So he's a traditionalist."

"That's extraordinarily generous of you," he snorted. "I know he's not a bad guy. I don't think he'd be a cop if he was. But he's a really proud predator and he is plain _wrong_ about some things, Carrots. If and when we become the hottest news at the precinct again, do me a favor and ignore him."

Judy didn't know the wolf well enough to guess at what Nick had heard, but his reluctance to share said all it needed to. "Deal."

Nick was always angry past her. Their bond was never the root of their issues: not when he'd walked out on her after the press conference last year; not even when he'd slipped back into her apartment in the dead of night that one time and she'd nearly tased him.

Judy was sometimes willfully blind to the constant perception that Nick was so vigilant against. But while neighbors and people on the street were easy to fool or ignore, there would be less hiding this from the collective focus of an entire police department. Half of them were licensed detectives.

It meant a great deal to Judy that he tried to protect her from so much of it, but she wished she knew how to get it through his thick skull that she was ready and willing to deal with the stares and the suspicion and whatever worse came their way.

They burned most of the day with the same aimlessness, hiking back down into the city center proper and taking advantage of their civil servant passes to ride the perimeter train that ran around the outskirts of Zootopia. They climbed to an observation bubble on the roof of the car and Nick tripped the 'out of service' sign on the way up so they'd have a better chance at privacy. They walked in the frigid quiet of Tundratown's steppes, staying out just long enough for the cold to start to get to them, and found a place that did exotic vegetarian sushi for lunch.

They wound up in her apartment that night, just keeping each other quiet company but for Judy's service radio in its charging cradle, crackling the occasional update out over the priority channel. They would bend ears to it, alert for developments in their own case, and when nothing further came from the second teams down in the Rainforest district, she would relax back against Nick's shoulder and he would adjust the screen on his phone so she could see the movie again.

"Will you stay here tonight?" She asked.

He considered. "As long as Bucky and Pronk keep it down."

She twitched an ear at the wall. "I think they're out right now."

"Well, then." Nick adjusted himself so she'd be more comfortable against him.

"Thanks for today," she murmured.

"Everyone deserves a little _normal_ once in a while," he said. "Are you holding up?"

"You worry so much about me."

"You change the subject a lot, too." His blunt claw traced her chin. "Come on. Are you okay? I know it wasn't easy to talk this morning."

Nick didn't seem likely to get up and leave now, at least. Judy committed. "It's still getting to me. The case. It's not as bad when you're here, but two nights ago I'm pretty sure I dreamed Boots was after me."

Something flashed on his face. Guilt, maybe. "You could have told me."

"You had a lot on your mind. We agreed to leave the rest out of it." And Judy hadn't wanted him to look like he did right now.

"We still don't know what this guy looks like. Or if it's even the right guy."

"Does it matter?" Judy watched him stare at the cracks in the ceiling.

"I want closure. So it stops following us home." Nick's tail thumped against the couch behind her. "See? It's not like I can ignore it, either."

It definitely was guilt. Judy eased forward to get a better look, skating her fingers through his chest fur.

She hadn't known the case was troubling him the way it had her, or hadn't acknowledged it. She'd chalked last night up to stress over their personal relationship, hadn't asked him why he was quiet because she'd been so worried about how he would take their own personal news. It felt selfish, in a convoluted way. This whole affair was such a maze of compromise and counter-compromise.

"You could have told me."

Nick's smile came out as more of a wince. "You had a lot on your mind."

"Okay, fox. Apologies all around."

Nick pulled her closer. "We found the antidote, though."

Judy wriggled. "Mm. This sure helps, but I think that's an epiphany we just had. What was it you said? 'Don't bottle it up?'"

He wrapped himself around her.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV Nick

Nick couldn't do that here. Leaving Judy's apartment that morning had been hard: not because it was early, or because they were diving back into a grisly investigation; but because for most of the day he got Torren instead of Judy, and Torren wasn't going to take well to spooning.

When had he gotten so clingy?

Understory did a decent trade when the night got going. From their vantage near stage left, they could see most of the show and keep an eye on most of the audience at the same time. They didn't look much like aficionados, not with his affected idle curiosity or Torren's actual boredom, but nobody had pointed at them and yelled about the fuzz yet, either.

Nick would have preferred to sit and actually listen to the music. Mercury was in fine form tonight. Maybe when this was over he could bring Judy back.

"Sergei said neither of our friends showed yesterday," Torren said.

Nick wasn't familiar with anyone on the second shift. He just shrugged. "The data says this is still the best shot."

"Vehicle, rhino scale."

They waited.

"Clear."

"I'd feel better if we knew why someone was so anxious to have a chat with this banker in the first place," Torren went on. "Think like prey, you know? What's he know that's got someone so angry at him?"

Nick counted from three.

"You should ask Hopps."

Because she was prey, you see, and all prey thought alike. Nick was glad for the decades he'd spent fine-tuning social barriers now. There wasn't so much a flick of the tail that betrayed how much Torren's idle noise got to him.

"I already know her answer."

Torren swiveled an ear. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. 'OCD is working on that right now, and trusting the field team to not screw up the grab.'"

That shut him up for a minute or two. Nick didn't know how Fangmire stood it. It was this verbal fight for dominance, some alpha wolf thing that Nick just didn't care about. He had humored Torren more at the start, when it had been a chance to dust off a sly wit he hadn't used much since the academy. But Torren never took the point, never left well enough alone. He kept slipping in jabs about predators and prey, probably because he knew eventually Nick would crack.

At least being undercover limited the worst of it. Nick rotated his ears to catch the music again - an excellent take on _My Romance_ \- and then to hunt for bits of conversation in the crowd nearest them, just in case. It was almost enjoyable, keeping a quiet eye on everyone around you because you knew something they didn't, but the fact one or two of them were at increased risk of getting killed tonight tempered that.

So Nick was glad, in a way, that Judy wasn't here for it. He would have preferred to watch her back himself, all else equal, but the sensor truck was out of the spotlight and the Fangmire-Marki tag team out there was a pretty decent second choice. She wouldn't like him thinking that way, of course. She'd hate the mere insinuation she couldn't do the same job anyone else here could. He, did, too, but he wanted her safe even more.

The set ended to scattered applause. Torren got up to go refill his drink.

Maybe the wolf was getting to him, after all. Nick shouldn't be dwelling so much on his partner while he had a job to do. They'd agreed to leave the case out of their time together off-duty, but that went the other way, too.

He slouched in his seat and ran his eyes over the crowd again. Mostly prey, but with a scattering of predators mixed throughout. Mice, otters, hippos, a lion and lioness on a date, a bunch of oryx in the corner. Unchanged from his last count. Most of them were still watching the stage, where the pianist was noodling around to keep loose before the music started up again. And Mercury-

Nick paused. Mercury was perched on a stool in the center of the stage, elbow on one knee, staring straight at him.

Nick raised his eyebrows.

The cougar's expression didn't change. He didn't even blink. But one ear twisted and dropped to point at the corner by the bar. Nick followed the cue.

Torren was on one end, leaning on the counter while he waited for his water. A few more mammals were swiveled in their seats to watch the stage. At the far end, by the back entrance, there were two new faces: a hyena in a battered sport coat and a rough-looking deer. Nick hadn't seen them come in.

He toggled his mic.

"Torren, on your twelve at the end of the bar. We have a couple of visitors. Hyena and a deer."

The wolf looked. "Where'd these guys come from?"

"Back door, probably. Between sets."

Torren accepted his drink and turned around to look idly out the front doors. "Prongs here has filed tines, boss."

Nick played it cool. There was nothing technically illegal about sharpening up your antlers, but it tended to get you looks. It was an aggression thing, not something he would have expected of an honest patron at Understory.

"Watch them," Fangmire said. "We're ready to move if you need us, but let's not force anything."

"Yeah."

"Vehicle, rodent-scale," Marki broke in.

Nick swore he could hear puzzle pieces starting to click.

"Scanner match," Fang said. "That's our guy, or at least his phone."

Nick met Torren's eyes across the club and willed the wolf to stay put. If he came back this way now they'd draw attention.

He seemed to get it, though. He held his position at the bar and turned with most everyone else to watch as the band on stage arranged itself to start playing again. Nick caught Merc's eye again and gave him a thumbs-up. It was ambiguous - _thanks for the warning, good luck,_ maybe _nice shirt_ \- but Nick hoped it would remind the cougar to stay put, whatever happened.

The small-scale set of front doors cracked. Nick couldn't see from here, but Torren could as he made a casual turn.

"Match. Rodent in the building."

"Okay, we're playing for keeps." Fangmire's voice helped steady Nick's nerves as he watched the banker take a seat near the back. "Stay eyes-on, but don't get spotted. We want Boots, remember. Follow that banker. They won't try anything here."

 _Unisphere_ was a surreal prelude to a murder. Nick tuned out the music and kept the lemming in the corner of his vision.

"We're moving to the alley entrance," Judy said in his ear.

Nick breathed out, long. He hadn't heard from her in twenty minutes, and now she was back in touch to say she was taking risks.

He was saved the stress at the end of the song, when the hyena left his post at the bar, walked past Torren and paused at the banker's table. Words exchanged, low enough to keep from distracting anyone nearby. The lemming frowned, nodded, and looked to the shadowy back door. Nick put one paw on the floor. If they went past Torren again, it would fall to him to report.

There they went. Nick held still, peripheral vision on the deer in the corner. "Hyena and lemming moving. Probably headed to the rear entrance."

Oh, this was hard. They couldn't so much as look over until the mooks weren't surveying the room. They'd have to get back there to follow them in the few seconds after they disappeared through the door and before they got too far down the alley.

They passed Torren. The deer stepped away from the bar and held the back door.

Close enough. Nick slipped away from the table, angling for the bathrooms and then changing course to hustle in the long arc behind everyone else on the floor.

"We're at the alley entrance," Fangmire sent. "Marki, adjust to cover the north end. We don't have eyes here."

"Moving. Two blocks."

Nick joined Torren and they started for the still-swinging service door. He got a vision of a lot of guns behind it, of an armored rhino and a messily flattened businessman. His stomach rolled.

"Hopps, you good?"

"Fine," she came back immediately.

It helped, it really did.

But Torren had a look on Nick really didn't like. "I'll never get why you play with your food," he muttered.

Nick clenched his free fist, the one that wasn't drawing his taser. "You fond of your teeth, Torren? Just drop it."

"Touchy."

Nick gave him his victory and focused.

They eased the door open, maybe ten seconds after their marks passed it. There they were, going left instead of right, deeper into the shadows under the burnt-out streetlamps. Did they have a car already here? The surveillance wasn't set up to catch any traffic from the north. That flow was usually minimal, but it was a gap, and now they might be paying for it.

"Vehicle," Marki snapped. "Rhino-scale, moving fast. Headed northwest."

"Leave it," Fangmire said. "They're out of position down here. Stay on soft targets at the alley entrance soon."

"Copy."

Nick and Torren eased down the little set of stairs at the back of the club and started north. Nick couldn't see the lemming, not even with night vision. The others were indistinct shapes walking alongside. The deer's antlers stood out, though, sharp and shining in the mist. When he glanced the other way, Nick saw Fangmire's big form and a beautifully familiar set of ears at the tiger's waist level.

"Car's just short of the alley entrance," Marki said. "No movement."

They picked up their pace. If Boots was in that car, they needed to get to the banker before he got inside.

"This guy's never moved a target before," Torren said, off the radio. "He always hits in place. Something's wrong."

"Fang, we could grab these guys," Nick said.

"Only if there's lethal threat," Fangmire said. "We want Boots."

"I'm not sure he's even here," Nick said.

There was commotion ahead. The escorts had grabbed the banker. As Nick watched, they looped some kind of rope around the lemming's wrists and pulled, effectively drawing him, leaving him stuck in midair, overpowered and helpless. Nick heard the tiny cries of protest and pain.

_"Hey!"_

They made it ten more steps, and then a huge shape peeled itself from the darkest of the shadows to the right. Torren bit out a startled curse.

"ZPD," someone yelled. It was his own voice, Nick realized. "Freeze it!"

Boots had to be ten feet tall. Nick's taser light only covered half of him. The rhino was dressed in a black tracksuit and he moved quickly, too quickly for megafauna. He ignored the stop order and turned away from them, out of taser range, charging down the alleyway toward the stranded banker. Whatever he wore on his feet rang on the concrete, a deep _clomp-clomp-clomp_. The ground shook.

Torren dropped his taser to clatter on the ground and went for lethal. But something grey blurred past from behind them.

Judy.

Nick went after her, ignoring Torren's yell, ignoring that he now had a friendly gun pointed at his back. They wouldn't win this race. Judy would never get into taser range in time, and he couldn't let her try, because if Boots turned-

Nick put that thought out of his head. Worry about the mark first. Why the hell wasn't Torren shooting?

Boots came off the ground.

Nick caught up to Judy, almost tackling her to the ground in the cover of the dumpsters. He clamped his paws over the base of her ears, just in time, and by some miracle managed to not be sick. He'd never get that sound out of his nightmares, but at least he could spare hers.

They'd failed.

Something at the end of the alleyway cracked and flashed. Incoming fire zinged overhead and sparked off the metal above them. They scrambled deeper into the stinking shadow.

Marki's rifle thudded from somewhere nearby, and the hyena cried out and went spinning to the pavement. But the deer turned to spray fire around the corner and Boots just kept going.

It was over in a squeal of tires. Silence roared back in.

Nick didn't have the energy for outrage just then. He crouched next to Judy, his paw on he shoulder. The relief that she was out of danger warred with the sickness, the knowledge that they'd lost the race, that it had all been for nothing. His mouth was dry.

"Why?"

"I had to end it," Judy said. "No more killing."

"Torren had him, Judy."

She shook her head hard enough to flop her ears. "Not like this, Nick. He has to answer for it."

Idealism to the point of suicidal recklessness. It was a very Judy thing to do, only this time it had backfired. Nick was watching some of that spark drain out of her right here and now, and for some reason that hurt him as much as knowing they'd screwed up and someone had died.

And then Torren pounded up.

"What the _fuck_ is your problem?"

"You didn't shoot," Nick said.

"You both jumped in front of me like you share a death wish. Are you crazy? We lost our shot, the mark's dead, our target's gone."

Nick got to his feet. Torren wasn't too far off the mark, in that if Judy was going to risk her life he would be right behind her. "Just raise HQ. If we get the choppers up now we can still spot the car."

Torren wasn't listening. He stared between them, at the way Judy was looking up at him, and his ears folded in sudden revulsion.

The truth was messy. Torren might have looked at Nick like he was a deviant, when he'd thought he'd had some plain old closet predator supremacy thing going on, but now he was staring at Judy like she was meat.

It made Nick's hackles shift. He was plenty shaken himself right now, and Judy had never had guards like his in the first place. They were all laid out, and now it was collapsing around them. "Hey."

"Oh, that's just-"

 _"Hey."_ Nick stepped between them, shielding Judy even if he only came up to the wolf's chin. Cold anger and fear crawled through his gut. He was really going to do this now, wasn't he? "I told you to shove it, Torren."

The wolf smacked Nick's warning paw aside. " _Fuck_ you, Wilde. It's none of my business if you're screwing prey in your off time, but when it gets in the way here you kind of make it my problem."

Nick hadn't growled in a long while. It was involuntary.

The ominous rumble Torren came right back with would have made Nick feel pretty inadequate, under other circumstances. Oh, it was an alpha thing, all right, except this went higher than partnership or department pecking order or even taxonomic family.

He didn't care now. If Torren was callous enough to do this right in front of Judy, right here, even with a body and a puddle of gore twenty feet away, Nick was ready to hit him.

Fangmire put a shoulder between them. Nick stumbled a step back with the impact.

"Cool it," the tiger hissed. "Both of you."

"He-"

"Not now." Fangmire rounded on Torren and pointed to the north end of the alley. "Our problems just went that way. Clear?"

Torren fought it for just an instant. But his ears dropped and his teeth disappeared. "Yes, boss."

Judy was on her feet, reassembling her expression into something professional.

Fangmire loomed over them. "Marki."

The snow leopard stood at the alley entrance, still in her climbing harness. She stowed her rifle across her back. "The car went southeast, through the wall toward city center. Air one is in pursuit."

"Thank you," Fang said. His radio was already in his paw. "Stay here until the scene team arrives. I'll get air two diverted for you."

"Yes, Captain."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [My Romance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shIc0iaFW7Q)   
>  [Unisphere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzZf89y4h6U)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV Nick

Nick didn't want to bounce along in the SWAT van, stuffed between the heaviest hitters ZPD had to offer as they climbed out of the city.

He didn't want to listen to orders anymore, or deal with Fangmire's icy warning glares. He didn't want to strap on riot plates and go right back into this mess, not even on evac backstop while the main team blew the front doors in Fallside Heights, of all places.

All he wanted was to get Judy alone. He wanted to grab her shoulders and demand if she even remembered her friendly fire arc training. He wanted to apologize for almost losing it right there in the alley, for Torren's heartless speciesism, again and again until she shut him up. He wanted to hide them away.

Nick was certain she'd almost gotten herself killed back there, but if he let that show Fang would pull him and he wouldn't be able to watch her back. All he could do now was lean close and whisper, so the engine noise would cover the words.

"Why?"

"Like you said." Judy had her knees drawn up to her chin on the oversize seat. "Closure. I want this done, before it gets any worse for anyone else. Or our mental states."

 _Our mental states._ Well, she wasn't wrong. "You went after ten feet of rhino with a sidearm taser."

"Torren wasn't shooting."

 _Because you were in the way, and I was right there with you._ Nick bit down on it and squeezed her paw as tight as he could, between their bodies in the seat so no one else would see. He hoped it was enough to remind her she was dragging him along, too.

They piled out five minutes later, hustling through the very park he and Judy had walked the morning before. The dark of night had given over to sickly blue floodlights and moving spots on the copters. Nick soured. Now they'd never be able to come back here in the mornings, not without the memories following them.

ZPD had tracked the car, eyes-on, all the way up here to Fallside. It had dived into an underground garage attached to one of the high-rises. Boots was presumably somewhere inside. The brains in the SWAT van had decided he had a safehouse here somewhere because he was paid well, not because he was a master tactician. It would make their jobs easier, assuming the civilians didn't get caught in the crossfire. That was why they'd cut the power to the whole building. There were bullhorns going, blaring a message to shelter in place. Patrol teams had cleared two blocks around.

Nick and Judy stayed out of the way and let Fangmire converse with the site commander, a big zebra called Westwood. Torren paced, ignoring them, his eyes and ears on the building. Nick envied his focus, in a way.

He wasn't about to look back at what had happened now. One of them getting distracted enough to start an argument during a fatal shootout was enough, and this night still wasn't over. Nick had more important things, more important rabbits to worry about. Job first. Her safety first. Decompression later.

"Two teams," the SWAT leader shouted over the helicopters and recorded warnings as they formed up. "Group one, you're spearhead. We think these guys are on the fifth floor, in a mid-hall unit. Thermal shows three bodies, and probably a lot of guns. You're going straight there. Group two, you're getting everyone else on that floor out. Your priority is zero civilian casualties. Clear behind the first team and go the other way if shooting starts."

"Yes, sir," they chorused.

"Stay on your points. I want all of you coming back from this." The polar bear gave Westwood a thumbs-up.

"SWAT is go," Westwood said on the radio. "Air two."

"Go," Marki commed.

"Ground pursuit."

Two cheetahs looked up from where they were checking each other's lightweight gear. "Go."

"Cordon."

"Go."

"Green light, people."

Uniformed officers held the doors for SWAT. Nick took up position behind a cruiser parked on the lawn and watched them bundle inside the atrium.

"Shift it, Wilde. We're on inner cordon."

Fangmire was even more imposing in riot plates. He held out a taser rifle, then twitched it out of range as Nick reached for it.

"Are you going to hold together on me? You and Hopps. This is not the time or place to get into it with anyone."

They'd un-switched partners in there somewhere, Nick noticed. He swallowed. "I'm okay, sir. We both are."

"Okay." Fangmire gave him the rifle. "We'll talk about that later, then."

Fangmire and Torren carried lethal rounds again, in carbines borrowed from SWAT. It made sense that they be the ones with the heaviest weapons: they were the strongest and arguably the most durable of the four of them. They would be statistically most effective. The big tasers were powerful enough to kill smaller mammals and would probably bring down Boots with their capacitors and heavy darts, but Nick decided he'd feel more comfortable with hollow points, too.

It wasn't supposed to be necessary. It went against the training, against his own morals. Nick had never once in his life wished for a more effective means of killing someone. But Boots was oddly personal now. He stalked both him and Judy even in their quiet time together. Nick was ready to take up lethal force if it meant relief for both of them.

They posted up a careful distance from the building, on the sidewalks where big oak trees would give them some cover if they needed it, and settled in to wait and watch.

The only noise now was air two in overwatch above them. Nick could see SWAT's tactical lights waving through the darkened atrium windows. Occasional clear calls came over the radio.

"At target. Thermal shows three."

"Confirm the big guy," Westwood said.

"Inconclusive, sir."

Nick glanced at Judy, one tree over. She had a determined grip on her rifle.

"Watch your backs, then," Westwood said, sounding less than pleased. "Do it."

"Standby. Three, two-"

The _whoomp_ of a concussion grenade blew out the windows above them. Glass tinkled and shimmered in the chopper spotlight. Gunfire chattered, slackened. Then nothing.

"Three hostiles down or injured," the team leader panted. "No rhino. Say again, no rhino."

"Sir, Team two," someone called. "We found two officers down in the basement corridor. Gunshot wounds and severe blunt trauma. Mendez needs an ambulance, bad."

The garage. Nick looked at the darkened portal.

"My team will check it," Fangmire said. "Come on."

"Go careful, Fang."

They advanced in pairs, properly this time, staying in cover and keeping their fire fields safe.

Judy crouched in the shrubbery at the edge of the driveway and twitched her ears. "I can hear an engine," she sent.

"Any footsteps?" Nick asked.

"Can't tell."

Nick willed his eyes to adjust faster. They were at a disadvantage out here, silhouetted against the relatively bright light of the park. The sooner they got out of this doorway, the better.

He took the lead, to give Judy better cover. Fangmire and Torren went the other way.

The garage was about half full. The emergency lights were out - some violation of code, Nick was sure - so he was relying on natural vision, staring hard into the corners to check them because of how they'd nearly missed Boots in the shadows the first time. As they worked deeper, he, too, picked out the sound of an engine at idle.

They paused in the cover of a pickup truck. Judy had cocked her ears to listen. Nick eased his head up far enough to see the back of the garage through the windshield.

The same car they'd seen back at Understory was at a haphazard angle, its back to the open doorway into the building, apparently deserted. The driver's side door was ajar, and the trunk.

Torren moved from across the way, down closer to the car, eyes and gun on the driver's seat, and everything went straight to hell.

They saw Boots before they heard him. He came from behind them, out of the shadows from the pillars at the center of the garage, where none of them had though to look. Nick didn't even have time for warning.

There was a gun in his huge hands, something larger than a pistol, something automatic. It thundered in the enclosed garage. Torren, caught out in front of the car, looking the wrong way, crumpled.

Boots held the trigger as he ran, firing in an indiscriminate arc, shattering windshields and setting off car alarms. It pinned the rest of them in place. Nick crouched over Judy, shielding her with his body against their truck. Glass whizzed past. He felt something catch his ear.

The rhino jumped over Torren and angled for his car. Fangmire opened up opposite. The shot caught Boots in his arm and Nick heard him grunt, but it wasn't his dominant hand and Fangmire got a burst of concentrated cover fire for his trouble. Boots ducked into the car.

Judy pushed her way out from cover and went straight for Torren, right in front of the grille. Nick followed on instinct, ready to snatch her back out of the way. Boots was going to floor it to get out of here, straight over Torren and anyone else in the way.

Judy grabbed Torren's ankles.

"Help me!"

Together they heaved. Torren was heavy, probably twice as heavy as Nick, all dead weight. But they moved him, and just in time. The car rocketed down the aisle, apparently no worse the wear for the shots Fangmire was now pumping into it. If he'd hit Boots again, it hadn't slowed him down.

"Marki, he's in the car. West exit."

Judy had scrambled out from underneath Torren. She was checking him over. His back plate had stopped three bullets but there was a dark stain on his shoulder, under Judy's paws as she ripped the riot pads free to get to him.

"Hopps," Fangmire snapped.

"He's alive. Shoulder. I think that's it."

The tiger sprinted for the exit, out the way Boots had gone, already on the radio for the medical teams.

"He's bleeding," Judy said. "I think it got an artery."

Nick knelt next to her. Her paws were soaked in crimson where she pressed against Torren's shoulder. It reeked of copper, hot and thick.

"Move."

"He's bleeding, Nick-"

"He needs more pressure. I'm heavier. On three."

They switched. Judy coughed and dug in a belt pouch for gloves. Of course she'd have them on her.

Nick could feel Torren's pulse under his paws, slowing but still strong enough. He kept the pressure on. He couldn't tell past the blood if it was getting any better, but it didn't seem to be getting any worse, either.

Judy checked Torren for breathing and shock. It was all they could do until the medics arrived. They seemed to be taking their time.

On the radio, Marki called it. Boots was dead. He'd rammed a guardrail and when he got out to run she'd put a bullet in his head.

Judy sat heavily, right there in the mess of safety glass and shell casings and lupine blood on the garage floor.

Nick didn't feel the relief he expected.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV Judy

The med team insisted on carting them down to Zootopia General, maybe because they didn't trust Judy's insistence that she wasn't hurt. Nick, to be fair, couldn't claim that himself. He had a tiny notch in one ear now, from a bit of speeding glass.

They got scrubs, not smocks, since they wouldn't have to stay, but first there were showers and inspections and bandages and doses of broad-spectrum antibiotics and blood tests, just in case. Judy barely got five minutes alone with Nick afterward, sitting on adjacent beds and just breathing the hospital air. They didn't talk. The flimsy privacy curtains weren't enough for what she needed to say.

So they watched each other. Nick stared at her with an almost uncomfortable intensity, as if he worried she might disappear if he looked away. It was fine, though, because she was giving him the same look.

It was over. Not cleanly, not without its compromises. A result short of success. But Boots was dead. The killings would stop.

Still, Judy didn't relax yet. She held onto Nick's eyes and drew what strength she could from that reassurance.

Fangmire knocked on the doorjamb. There was a badger with him from the night shift, carrying a recorder and a pair of clipboards.

"Sorry we have to do this now, you two."

"How's Torren?" Judy asked.

"Stable. Enjoying some replacement blood. He'll be here a few days, but he's out of danger."

Some weight lifted from her shoulders. Torren was a whole mess she didn't want to appraise directly. Judy had acted on instinct and training and because she was going to try to save anyone bleeding out in front of her, regardless of what they'd said. But that was where she wanted to leave it for now.

The badger handed over his clipboards and started his recorder for their statements. Nick went first. Judy watched him keep his tail curled carefully in his lap. She thought she heard his voice tighten when he recounted the shootout in the alley, but the badger didn't react and Fangmire wore a carefully neutral expression.

When it was her turn, Judy sat up straight and rattled through it as thoroughly as she could remember. Had it really been just the one evening? A lot could blur by fast when you were getting shot at.

She emphasized she'd gone ahead in the alley, looking between the clipboard's prompts and the microphone windscreen. She could feel Nick's eyes on her, but she didn't dare look over.

"Officer Miguel Torren suffered a gunshot wound to the right shoulder from close range. The suspect fled in the vehicle. I and Officer Wilde rendered first aid until EMS arrived and took command of the scene. We were sent to the hospital, which brings us to now."

"Is there anything further you wish to add?"

"Not at this time. Thank you."

The badger nodded and collected his equipment. Fangmire stood.

"Wait outside for me, will you, Baxter?"

"Sure thing."

The door latched. Judy and Nick both drew breath, but the tiger held up a paw.

"Before you say anything. I want to thank you both for saving Torren's life, which you undoubtedly did. The surgeons say the bullet ruptured an artery."

"Second," he said at their silence, "I can't change anything in his report, when he gets far enough off the pain meds to make one. You know how this works. But I'll deliver mine to Chief Bogo personally."

Judy looked from Nick back to Fangmire. "Thank you, Captain."

He looked serious. "You say a lot of things under pressure. You also don't hear a lot of things under pressure."

Nick's ears twitched before he seemed to remember one of them was sore. "You say something, sir?"

"Don't push it, Wilde." Fangmire smiled. "You two are dismissed for twenty-four hours' mandatory paid leave. There's a cruiser downstairs that will take you home when you're ready. Report to me first thing on Tuesday morning for the full debrief."

"Yessir."

\---

They got out together, trusting the night shift driver whose name neither of them knew would buy Nick's story that he lived close enough nearby to walk the rest of the way.

And they were finally alone, or close enough, standing there on the street in the night fog. Judy felt Nick's paws squeeze her shoulders so tight it hurt.

"Carrots, are you okay?"

She looked up at him. "This is going to take some sorting through, Nick. You and me both."

"Obviously. When have we ever got storybook endings? Question stands."

"For now, yes. What about you?"

"Well, I shook that driver, so I am, too." Nick looked down the road. "For now. For tonight. Bogo's not going to be happy with you, or me."

"It's better to get out in front of it," Judy sighed. "Integrity will get us further than letting a fight come out in review. And it was going to be a total mess either way, with the fourth hit and the siege uptown. Not our finest hour."

"We did save Torren, I guess that counts for something. Half a gold star, maybe."

Even out here, his barriers were still mostly up. It suggested he wasn't as okay as he was letting on. She wasn't going to blame him, though. This would take weeks to process, maybe months.

She led him to her apartment doorstep. The lobby spilled warm yellow light out through the windows. It was so late as to be nearly morning now, which was good for them. Nobody would see the predator passing through.

Except Mrs. Reagan the armadillo landlady, of course, but the woman never slept. And she was maybe the one exception in the building when it came to Nick. She smiled and waved as they went to the stairs.

Those were harder than Judy expected. Nick gave her his arm, which she thought was a nice touch, until she realized he was leaning on her, too. They were both wiped out.

But she was home, and Nick was here with her, and it was over. When was that going to sink in? Boots had died and she'd nearly collapsed with relief that it was done, but Torren had been hurt badly. She'd left the hospital and Torren was going to survive and now she had to worry about seeing Bogo that week. Now they were in her hallway, almost to her door, and Judy swore her vision tunneled with the intensity of the knowledge that they had lived and it was over but they might not ever escape it.

"Easy," Nick murmured. "No rush, Carrots."

The stress would ambush them both. Judy knew they'd be fighting it for a long time. But this was home, her familiar door in their face. They had to do something.

"Will you promise to leave the specifics here?" she asked. "We'll sort it out, but it has to be just us. No names. No case. No nothing."

Nick stared at her door. He was holding her paw. "Yes. It's the only way this will work, I think."

Just anonymous stress, without the nightmares, without the looming figures or the shattering glass or the dark alleyways. If they left all that behind, it became manageable, because they'd learned to do that together. They would leave parts of themselves on this side of the door, but together they could make things whole and right again.

The door creaked open to familiar dimness and scents and the reassurance of home, closed behind them. Nick slid the locks.

And it worked.

They didn't speak. It wasn't the time for words. Nick simply picked her up and crushed her into a hug. He was nearly growling with the intensity of it, thrumming Judy's chest along with his. She dug her own claws into his back. She didn't want him to ever let go.

Nick's couch was closer. They sat awkwardly and shuffled clothing free until they were comfortable enough to come back together and curl up in an exhausted ball, fur on fur. The relief of it was enough to make Judy's vision swim, but Nick wasn't in any better shape.

They lay there forehead to forehead, as close as they could get to each other, and fell asleep.

\---

A rabbit and a fox woke together on a couch in the dusty sun of late afternoon, without a single secret between them.

Judy stayed still, her head pillowed on the warm fur of Nick's shoulder, and took it in. Moving might break the spell.

Eventually, Nick's arms tightened around her. She looked up and he was smiling at her, eyes half open, ears every which way with sleep.

"Hey, you."

She nuzzled him. "How are you feeling?"

"Hungry."

"I have some broccoli."

Nick smiled. "That'll work."

He rolled them over carefully, extricating himself enough to get up and cross to the refrigerator. The chill rushed in where he'd held her. Judy gathered her legs under her and watched the last of the direct morning sun on the russet fur on Nick's back.

They were okay. no matter what happened, no matter what Bogo laid into them, no matter what their co-workers and comrades thought of them, Judy would hold up this moment as proof they could ignore the messy rest of the world and focus on what mattered.

Nick's weight displaced the cushions enough that she had to lean into him. That was fine by her.

He held up a pathetic, wilted floret for her. She reached for it and he captured her paws in his, folded them around the green stalk, and it was the most romantic thing in the world. He guided it all together to her mouth.

"I can feed myself, Nick." It felt like something she had to say, even if she didn't want him to stop that badly.

"Give me this," he murmured in her ear. "I won't get to do it at work."

"You are obnoxious." She took a bite.

"Yeah, well. You seem magnetically okay with that right now."

Judy held up a piece for him. he took it and her paw, plucking the stalk free to leave just her fingers, and pressed them to his muzzle.

"This will be how it comes out," he said. His breath warmed her fingers. "I mean, not open-wide-here-comes-the-broccoli, but people are going to notice. They make a point of noticing things. Are you ready for that?"

"Yes," Judy said. "We'll figure it out. And you're doing fine so far."

Nick glanced sidelong at her and a wry smile quirked on his muzzle. "You're generous, Carrots."

"Eat your broccoli," she admonished. She knew what he was thinking.

He chewed, and she watched him. There was tension in his neck, in the base of his ears. She reached for him and scratched gently behind them. He closed his eyes.

The little notch in his ear still had a white adhesive bandage folded around it, stiff under Judy's fingers. She plucked at it.

"Ow," Nick said.

"Hush." Judy stood on the couch in front of him and cradled his ear to remove the obstruction. They hadn't had to shave any patches, at least.

The little cut was barely noticeable unless she looked for it. "You look fine. It's not deep at all."

"I'm no longer perfect," Nick corrected. "I'm the most attractive thing in any room I'm in by a slimmer margin now."

"You got that last part right, at least. I was going to say you look like a proper scoundrel now."

He hugged her.

They polished off the broccoli and lay back again, choosing not to move because they didn't have to. Nick played with her ears. She was sensitive, and his paws were gentle. She would have drifted off again right there on his chest, had he not spoke.

"Thank you for putting up with me. With everything that happens."

She tilted her head to look up at him. "Like I could do anything else."

"With Torren," he said, and frowned, searching for the words. "And at work. If it ever goes sour. Know that it's not a reflection on you. I'll never blame you for anything that happens."

"No." Judy pushed herself to all fours, kneeling astride his hips and resting her paws on his shoulders. "I know. Neither of us know what to expect."

"I don't like it. Not all the time. But I'm going to deal with it when you force my paws." he looked up at her. "I just want you to know why."

Judy knew she was a reckless hothead sometimes. A dangerous idiot, even. And the couch was a place for admitting that. "Sometimes I don't think," she said. "Back in the alley, I could have spared you that. I'm sorry."

Nick's ears dropped and he looked at the door. "That's a breach from the fake dream world we both hallucinated out there. Stop it."

"Nick-"

He captured her cheeks, made her look at him. He was so guilty. "That's what I'm talking about, Judy. Don't let stuff like that shape us. Promise."

Her throat closed. "Promise."

They would never achieve _perfect._ The deck was too stacked. But they could forgive each other the things that came between them. Had to, if they wanted their connection to survive. It would take sacrifice, and argument, and rough patches until they managed to see eye-to-eye again on the issue of the day. But what relationship didn't?

Right here and now, they'd proved it could endure, even in the most dire of moments. With her promise, Nick's face cleared, and Judy knew she would give him everything she could to make this work. And it would get easier, she was certain. The only way they could go from here was up.

She leaned close, took Nick's head in her paws the way he held hers, and kissed him for the first time.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> POV Judy

Judy finished speaking and sat, oddly deflated. Bogo's office wasn't a courtroom, but it might as well have been one. The defense now rested, for better or for worse.

The buffalo stood on his side of the desk, staring them down, his arms crossed across his chest.

"Nobody's perfect," he finally said. "Some seem determined to actively sabotage our progress sometimes. Despite that, you both did good work on this."

"Thank you, sir."

"You're welcome. You're also assigned to two weeks of remedial threat response classes at the Academy, and I might throw Wilde in after you. Your execution makes you a menace, Hopps."

Definitely deflated. Judy's ears dropped. "yes, sir."

"What about Boots?" Nick asked.

Bogo looked at the bulging case file on his desk, made even larger now with the addition of post-action reports from the whole team. Fangmire's was on top, Judy noticed.

"We didn't get a chance to question him, which is always a loss," Bogo said. "But City Hall is finally lending us some muscle to get through the bank bureaucracy now that we've shot up one of its nice neighborhoods. We'll get a break on the financing side eventually."

"Let us know what you find," Judy said.

"I won't ask you to come on unless you want to." Bogo paced around his desk toward the door, indicating the meeting was over. "You won't get to immediately, either; not until I and Casset over at the Academy are convinced you've re-learned why guns are dangerous."

He wasn't going to let her forget this. And he shouldn't. "Yes, sir."

"One more thing." Bogo blocked the door as they got off their chairs and turned to stare them both down.

Judy got a sinking feeling.

"We don't have anything on record about distracting personal relationships, so I don't need to advise either of you of the value of discretion or professionalism."

Judy watched guilt leak onto Nick's face, too. "No, sir," she said.

"Let me tell you, it's quite a relief. Having to deal with something like that would be an _unprecedented_ PR problem for the entire department. People would lose jobs. The very civic trust this organization depends on to function could shake."

Judy heard Nick swallow. "I imagine, sir."

Bogo took a step forward. "If I were in some alternate universe forced to contemplate two of my officers entering into such a relationship, I'd be issuing very stern warnings to _not screw anything up._ Anyone this hypothetical scenario applied to would get exactly one shot."

He could look menacing indeed. Judy felt extra-small under his gaze. "I think these imaginary officers would take such a warning very much to heart, Chief."

Bogo looked between them, nostrils flaring. But Judy swore there was a certain warmth to his eyes. "Good. Now get out of my office. If you come back here with fewer than 500 parking tickets between you this afternoon, it had better be to hand in your badges."

Judy had jumped for literal joy the last time Bogo gave her a chance when her career was in the balance, but some things you just did not joke about. She kept her expression in careful check and followed Nick to the door. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," Bogo said. He opened the door.

The big tiger was staring down at them like a schoolteacher trying to decide how to deal with the playground bullies this time.

"And now you're my problem again."

Judy smiled. "Fang."

"That's Captain to you, Officer Hopps." But Fangmire was grinning, too. He beckoned and they followed. "See? Not so bad."

"Speak for yourself," Nick grumbled. "I have to go back to the Academy because of her. I never signed on for this."

Judy elbowed her partner in the ribs. "Thank you, Captain."

"They issued you two more heart than head," Fangmire said. "It's not always a bad thing."

"Is Torren out yet?" Judy asked.

"The doctors say tomorrow, maybe. He's already climbing the walls." Fangmire led them down the broad stairs to the main lobby. "Don't mind him if you see him around the next few days. I gave him some paperwork to keep busy. He feels guilty, you know. One day he'll work it up to apologize."

Judy breathed out. She didn't care about his views right now. Fangmire was right: you said and heard things in the heat of the moment. They didn't have to define anyone.

"And if anyone else gives you any grief, point me at them," Fangmire said. "They have more important things to worry about than you two."

Nick smiled at Judy. "Thanks, Captain."

"That's Fang to you, under these circumstances." The tiger winked and started across the hall toward the offices. "Good luck. Maybe I'll come get some tips when I finally get the courage to talk to Shayler down in logistics."

Judy blinked. Shayler was a doe.

Nick, too, stared at Fangmire's retreating back. "Didn't see that one coming."

"It takes all kinds." Judy started to the front doors so he would follow.

They crossed the lobby. Clawhauser waved. Various officers and staff murmured greetings. It felt so _normal_.

"I think we got it wrong," Judy said as they pushed through the doors and into the morning sunlight. "Nobody's talking."

They passed Marki, taking the stairs two at a time the other way. The snow leopard spared them a nod and - to Judy's surprise - a little smile.

"See?"

"Marki wouldn't ask or even care," Nick said after the lobby doors had closed behind the cat's long tail. He adjusted his glasses. "And she totally knows."

They diverted to the vehicle lot, where their little meter cart was waiting.

"That's three then," Judy said. "Four, if you count Bogo. And they'll keep it quiet."

"Even Torren?" Nick considered. "Well, maybe. We've got good leverage."

"You're going to milk 'we saved your life' for favors forever, aren't you?"

"You're not?" Nick asked. He waved an expressive paw. "Go on, say it again. _'We saved your life, Torren.'_ "

Judy sat in the driver's seat and waited for Nick to buckle his seatbelt. The day was, as he'd predicted that night a long time ago on her couch in his apartment, shaping up to be everything she'd wanted it to be. Today, the world was their quiet civic oyster, full of 30-seconds-expired parking meters for the taking.

And if and when they were called to do more?

She adjusted the rear-view mirror so it caught the notched edge of Nick's ear.

She knew how to deal with that, too.

\---

It took many rounds of morning bagels, a lot of talking and a lot of kissing the worst of it into submission, but they had finally started working through everything, processing it as best they knew how.

They weren't over the case by a long shot, but Judy was more confident now that nightmares would be a rarity for both of them. They could move on with their lives, return to almost normal. To Nick's confessed surprise, they were even able to walk in Fallside Heights again, despite their strongest memories of the place now being the time they helped SWAT kick the doors in.

But they'd expanded to other parks, too, new places they hadn't seen before, with little homes of their own on the edges that made for fantasy that was just as compelling.

This place, just a few blocks from Nick's apartment, was Judy's new favorite. The riverfront narrowed to a little rushing stream, and there was a broad landscaped amphitheater on one bank that funneled down to a little stage at the water's edge. This evening it was a hive of activity. Judy sat with Nick about halfway up the steep hill and listened to Mercury tune up with his band.

While she waited, she watched the people around them. There was a good mix, as usual: families with kids, single listeners and even the odd predator-prey pair. Those, she nudged Nick and pointed out.

"Do you think they're here together?"

"What, like us?" Nick shrugged. "We can't be the only ones."

"I like that idea."

"As long as you don't go up and ask," Nick said. He dipped an ear to her so she'd knew he was giving her a hard time.

"What's Merc playing tonight?"

"He wouldn't tell me," Nick said. "Said it ruins the surprise to let people know what's coming."

So they waited, and when the music started, Judy watched Nick's ears come forward to catch it more sharply. He smiled and relaxed, leaning back on his elbows on the grass.

Judy let it wash over her. It was soothing, and optimistic and passionate.

"I've wanted to do this since we first heard him," Nick said. "We should have been together for it."

"We are now," Judy said. She relaxed into the shared enjoyment. Her paw tapped his in the grass.

He looked down at the contact, but instead of moving away he smiled at her and twined his little finger around hers. He kept it there for the whole song, holding her tight.

By the time the warm breeze carried the last notes past them, and Mercury caught sight of them on the hill and pointed up at them with a big smile, Judy knew.

"I think I'm in love with you, fox."

Nick's ears snapped to again. He looked at her with wide eyes, and then his whole body lit up with a smile so intense it warmed her chest, too. "It wouldn't be your first poor decision. First the chasing the armed perps with the taser thing, now this."

She smacked his arm with her free paw. "You chased me."

"I'll out-stupid you any time I think it will help, Carrots." He waved to Mercury, then looked down at their paws between them. "Which is to say I'm pretty sure I'm in love with you, too. I've known for a while."

They listened to the music for a while.

"Are you ready to commit, though?" Nick asked. "I snore sometimes."

"People shoot at us," she giggled at him, helpless. "We've made that work."

Nick looked solemn. "Just so you know what you're getting into."

Oh, she knew. Whatever came next, Judy wanted to do with him at her side, because they were stronger as a team than they ever could be themselves.

That, she would get into gladly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand done. Thank you all for reading! I say it every time, but your support and reactions are motivating like nothing else.
> 
> And stay tuned! I've got a [writeblog](https://falke-scribblings.tumblr.com/) where I'm running updates for current and future projects, and a [chronology](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yPmpmdo39SmiRNC4BJVv2PAWi7fxBoP5FWba9n8s3qg/edit?usp=sharing) of applicable works here.


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